Transcript It is not all about technology

Mobile and Wireless Computing
CITS4419
Week 6: It’s not all about technology
Rachel Cardell-Oliver
2014
Users and Buyers: acceptance
Users: interfaces
Users: perceptions e.g. comfort
Sellers : licensing
Technology Adoption Outcomes
• stabilisation (success),
• path-dependent adoption (adoption of
“efficiency” innovations),
• backlash (unsuccessful adoption) or
• system breakdown (continuation of business
as usual)
Source R. Brown http://watersensitivecities.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/
Enabling-the-Transition_Presentation_020414.pdf
Technology Adoption Process
Adoption of new technologies has been mapped
as a six-stage transition process,
• issue emergence,
• issue definition,
• shared understanding and issue agreement,
• knowledge dissemination,
• policy and practice diffusion,
• embedding new practice.
Advocating and Contesting Narratives
For each stage there is an advocating narrative and a contesting narrative.
Contesting narratives for each adoption stage include
there is no problem,
the science is biased
won't work and not necessary,
too expensive,
not feasible,
too difficult to manage, too narrow and limited to a particular agenda.
The corresponding advocating narratives are:
we have a problem,
the cause of the problem is X,
the solution (backed by scientific evidence) is Y,
we have responsibility for solving this problem,
there are multiple benefits to solving this problem,
prosperity and liveability are enhanced by embedding the new practice.
Smart Home examples
Advocating Narrative
Contesting Narrative
• Problem : how to support
disabled people living at
home
• Cause: lack of support for
some basic tasks of living eg
controlling doors or window
• We are the ones who
can/should address this
need
• System can be extensible
and adaptable for different
users
• Roll out to homes and tests
• There is no problem
• The technology is untested,
unsafe
• It would be too expensive
• People won’t use it, its not
feasible
• Too specialised, can’t be
used in enough situations
Users and Buyers: acceptance
Users: interfaces
Users: perceptions e.g. comfort
Sellers : licensing
Accessibility
• Smart homes will be used by people from
many backgrounds and will be accessed with
many different user interfaces.
• Designing user interfaces for disabled people
has a number of special conditions.
Type of Disability
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Visual
Auditory
Physical
Speech
Cognitive
Language
Learning
Neurological
Ms Kaseem
Teenager with deaf-blindness
• At home she uses:
–
–
–
–
Screen magnification SW to enlarge text to a suitable font size
Screen reader SW to display screen text on a refreshable braille device
Large computer screen with high res and high luminosity
Portable refreshable braille device
• Mobile phone:
– Buttons or braille characters on the screen
– Vibration function to signal touching the buttons on the touch screen
– GPS for orientation, searching and recording
• Problem: Public transport (bus) timetables get distorted when
enlarged
Source: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/people-use-web/stories.html
Mr Yunus
Retiree (85) with low vision, hand tremor, mild
short-term memory loss
• At home he uses:
–
–
–
–
Specialised mouse to compensate hand trembling
Enlarges web site text using web browser settings
Zoom whole web page vs enlarge text only
Bookmarks with images to help remember favourite web sites
• Web activities:
–
–
–
–
Maintains his own blog and tracks several blogs on art history
Read news websites
Uses the web to stay in touch with family and friends
Photo sharing web site with his grandchildren
• Problem: CAPTCHAs
Source: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/people-use-web/stories.html
Designing for Disabled Users
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/people-use-web/diversity
• Guide for designing (web sites) for people with disability.
• It contains information on different types of disability as
well as ways of making web pages accessible.
• Features to be considered include contrast, readability,
mouse-free use.
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are
international guides for accessible web page design.
• The recommendations are available from
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
• Author tools for assessing accessibility, such as W3C CSS
validator and HTML validation service, are listed on
http://trace.wisc.edu/world/web/
Accessibility Guidelines
• Most web servers provide user tools and plugins that can
be used by people with disability e.g. mouse free,
readability.
• For example, a catalogue of extensions for disabled people
for the Chrome web browser is available from
• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/ext/22accessibility?hl=en-US
• Some quick guides for accessible web design include
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/
• http://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/training/it-accessibilityquick-guide.php
WCAG 2 at a Glance
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/
Mobile Device Users
• Another accessibility problem is designing
interfaces that are suitable for use on mobile
devices such as tablets and phones as well as
traditional computer screens.
• Design guidelines for web sites for mobile devices
:
• http://www.w3.org/2007/02/mwbp_flip_cards
• http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/mobil
web
• http://www.developereconomics.com/look-4mobile-ui-frameworks/
Users and Buyers: acceptance
Users: interfaces
Users: perceptions e.g. comfort
Sellers : licensing
Thermal Comfort
Function of personal and environmental features.
Personal features: metabolic rate and clothing
insulation
Metabolic rate of 0.7 met is sleeping, 1.0 seated,
1.2 to 1.4 light activity and 2.0 moving activity.
Environmental features: air temperature, mean
radiant temperature (from surrounding surfaces),
air speed and relative humidity.
ASHRAE 55-2004 standard
CBE Thermal Comfort Tool
http://smap.cbe.berkeley.edu/comforttool/
Users and Buyers: acceptance
Users: interfaces
Users: perceptions e.g. comfort
Sellers : licensing
Software Licensing
• Much of the software in for smart homes is open
source
• However, there are also many companies building
closed-source products for what is expected to be
a huge market
• In this context, it is particularly important to
consider intellectual property (IP) for software
development.
• There are many free SW licenses. GPL is popular.
Gnu Public License (GPL)
• Anyone can use the SW
– Users are free to cooperate and share bug fixes and
improvements
• Future users can not make it private
– Requires that all released improved versions be free
SW
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyUseGPL
Asserting the GPL
• http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
recommends:
• The following statement should go near the
beginning of every source file, close to the
copyright notices.
GPL License Statement
This file is part of Foobar
Foobar is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of
the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Foobar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty
of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with Foobar. If not,
seehttp://www.gnu.org/licenses/
Summary
• Successful SW development depends on more
than the SW technologies used
• Adoption of new technology is a process of
working out advocating and competing
narratives
• Usability (and knowing your intended users) is
an important part of SW design
• Get to know the GPL software license (or
others)