Designing for the Web of Things

In the early 90’s, Xerox PARC researcher Mark Weiser envisioned a new computing paradigm where information services are not processed and delivered by personal compu-ters but by a variety of devices proliferating in the environment. If researchers kept exploring this approach for years, embo-dying the “Ubiquitous computing” vision in people’s everyday life has always been an obstacle. The democratization of mobile networking infrastructure and the miniaturization of electronic components now allows manufacturers to embed connectivity chipsets and computing capabilities into everyday objects or environments. While the “Internet of Things” community conducts research on building a reliable infrastructure connecting these so-called “smart” objects, others are relying on the Internet Protocol to expose objects as resources of the World Wide Web. The Web of Things approach provides “connected” objects or environments with the ability to interact with existing web services, deliver information and modify their behavior according to specific events or rules. This raises a lot of technical, but also design issues that are nevertheless rarely addressed by researchers. In this realm of opportunity, what kind of applications can be envisioned and leveraged? From a design perspective, we propose to investigate how Web of Things technologies can enable the creation of innovative services delivering.

Research interests:
- service design for the web of things
- mental models of object-based application and objects’ ecosystems
- interactions with smart objects
- product design and user interface design