D+TM #8 Rob van Kranenburg

D+TM #8 Rob van Kranenburg

Internet of Things and designers

In IoT-I we identified a gap between the policy recommendations, Privacy Impact Assessment Frameworks and academic research on the one hand and the start-up reality of IoT on the ground with numerous Internet of Things Platforms, a growing group of attempts to build industrial IoT clusters, fuelled by the 2014 financial and economic boost as the influential Gartner 2014 report puts Internet of Things, which promises a world in which every electronic device has a SIM card and its own presence on the net, at five to 10 years from actual productivity.

Right now, it says, the concept is instead it is at the “peak of inflated expectations”. If IoT is characterized by keywords it is dynamism, flexibility, speed, convergence and disruption. Finding formats of quality on which to base organizational decisions that go beyond the traditional surveys, research cycles and interviews, becomes as important as the technological choices that determine investments.

As SocioTal.eu is about novel and innovative ways of addressing barriers to IoT adoption of citizens, it also works on these new formats of quality in gaining data, information and knowledge. In Y1 the first iteration consisted on gaining input, feedback and information on IoT as a reality in business by forming Internet of Things Meetup Groups, building co-creation formats for gaining structured input from endusers with the partners in the pilot cities , doing co-creation workshops with endusers and desk research.

The initial technological and socioeconomic barriers identified through the Sociotal.eu Meetups, workshops, events and desk research are:

Lack of third party trust providers
Lack of oversight for SME’s in technological landscape and success stories
Lack of rich scenarios

The new role of the designer then becomes:

Stakeholder Coordinator – focus on negotiation, visualization, design for debate and conflict
Co-creation – focus on designing of brainstorms, use case creation in house with startups and developers
Product design: focus on feedback mechanisms and interaction as resonance in a world of ‚seamless’ and invisible networks and agents

In the workshop we will focus on designing feedback. For the workshop read in advance
UBICOMP TO PROVIDE FEEDBACK FOR PEOPLE WITH OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER
Rob van Kranenburg, Resonance Design
http://www.andrewsenior.com/papers/PankantiIEEEPC03.pdf
and reflect on what your own preferred feedback is (vision, smell, touch, hear, taste…)

Pictures by Eugena Ossi