In everyware, the garment, the room and the street become sites of processing and mediation. Household objects from shower stalls to coffee pots are reimagined as places where facts about the world can be gathered, considered, and acted upon. And all the familiar rituals of daily life, things as fundamental as the way we wake up in the morning, get to work, or shop for our groceries, are remade as an intricate dance of information about ourselves, the state of the external world, and the options available to us at any given moment.- From Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, by Adam Greenfield

Take a second to think about all the things in your life that you consider “frozen” and inanimate: your car keys, your refrigerator, your clothing. Now, imagine them as living, breathing, computing machines that collect, distribute, analyze information and react to you and your environment. You can probably imagine a very different world—one that is more customized to your life, perhaps.

Because of the evolving price performance of computer processors, affordable, practical micro mobile computing is finally upon us. The emerging technology world calls it “ubiquitous computing,” or “ubicomp” for short. Ubicomp technology is quickly helping us conceive that every artifact touching our daily life has the potential to process, analyze and service our needs and wants in ways we haven’t even envisioned yet.

Enter the intelligent ubicomp devices. These artifacts, redesigned with micro processing capabilities, are able to learn much more about us (and changes in the environment) and adapt to fit our needs—in real time. If you haven’t noticed, this ubiquity in processing and computation is already surrounding us: freeway speedpasses, “smart” phones and even running shoes. As Greenfield states, this new phenomenon is quickly becoming “everyware.”

Practical Applications For Ubiquitous Computing
Like the examples above, imagine these not-so-fanciful scenarios:

• Packages that are location and climate aware and make constant real time updates to delivery services and recipients
• Trash cans that calculate weight, material, frequency of use and make calculations on ecological efficiency and wasted resources
• Buildings that sense foot traffic, temperature and noise, and transform their fundamental composition (using nanotechnology) to accommodate efficient and appropriate uses for the people in them.
• Retail spaces that sense customers’ moods, sentiments and emotions and adapt messages, offers and merchandise for more meaningful shopping experiences

Practical Implications For Smart Things, Data Analysis and User Experiences

If you haven’t already felt it, the flood gates of the information age have been open for a while. The volumes of data we consume isn’t slowing down, and analysis of that data is growing up in a big way. Deriving meaning from it is another challenge. Immediate implications that come with ubicomp and smart “things” are now, however, obvious:

• The computational power of small devices will open up opportunities in a deeper understanding of human behavior, well beyond demographics and psychographics. This complex albeit more holistic view of people—and customers—will provide a powerful, multidimensional view of our plugged-in audiences.
• The floodgates of data collection, mining and filtering will continue to be problematic but will pose the most opportunity for information professionals—analysts, strategists, and user experience designers—to develop holistic customer experiences that address people’s needs and wants in real-time, real-world scenarios.
• Designers of interactive tools, environments and services will lead the charge to design and program smart, everyday objects that accommodate basic needs as well as appeal to the emotional component of people’s experiences, helping develop connections that reach well beyond person-to-person contact.

The possibilities could go on and on, as ubicomp, intelligent devices and user experience design are transforming the way we interact with our “stuff” on a daily basis. How else can you envision the changing landscape of ubiquitous computing for you? For your customers?

As everyone has probably heard by now, the famous “Become a Fan” button on Facebook will soon change to a “Like” button. This seemingly insignificant label change is presumably aimed at helping lower the barrier for interaction among Facebook users. No longer are people posed with the internal question “Am I really interested in a page’s content so much as to  become a FAN of the page?” Rather, they probably only will ask themselves “Hey, I LIKE this content and I find it interesting.” The perception change for users probably encourages interaction with content. Facebook has been reportedly notifying agencies of the change and is recommending that they use “Find us on Facebook” or “Like us on Facebook” for the changed verbiage.

But what does it mean for Marketers within Facebook? One could argue this is Facebook’s attempt to better serve users and build user communities, thumbing its nose at what has likely become a key engagement measuring point for brands and companies. It seems people will generally be more inclined to “like” content than become a “fan” of content, because “liking” something is far less committal than becoming a “fan” of something.

This linguistic change poses some interesting depth-of-engagement questions. How does this simple label change affect key performance indicators for a company or brand? More importantly, how does it change the perception of their value to brands and companies? Does it have detrimental or positive effects on the engagement metrics used by Fan Page administrators? And for users, should “Fan Pages” now become “I Like” pages?

I don’t tread lightly on the subject of where I think interactive marketing is going tomorrow: (Social Gaming). It seems like the writing has been on the wall (for me at least), for some time now. Whether it’s an Xbox 360, Playstation 3, or Nintendo Wii, the convergence is going to happen. When it does happen, it will be very fast. I’m not talking about in-game advertising, but about a new breed of games in the “Social Gaming” genre. Don’t go to your local Best Buy to get one off the shelf, because they’re not here yet. I’m talking about the integration of social platforms into the gaming industry. We’ve seen sites like Xfire as a first step in bridging the gap of communication, but I’m talking about a seamless gaming / social experience that goes across platforms, and utilizes information culled from all your social networks. Elements from your real life (RL) will be utilized to create your in-game (IG) or virtual reality. If your agency does not have a gaming platform, ask your boss to expense out one, two, or all of them, load up on some games, and research the hell out of them before you get left in the dust. Social Gaming will be the next time sink, and for all your marketers, you better be ready.

Last night I had the fortunate opportunity to attend the local UPA MN lecture where Susan Dray and David Siegel talked about some of the myths of user research.  Without getting into the details of the presentation, their main message was basically don’t always trust research outcomes, no matter how massive or sophisticated they appear.

We work hard to never stop questioning our approaches to defining customer or user experience problems, in addition to our methods in answering them. But as experience design strategists and designers in agency or consultancy settings like Bolin Digital, we often don’t have the luxury of large budgets to help us inform our design decisions for many projects.

In the methods of our work, we rely heavily upon activity-, user-, and system-centered approaches as models to guide us through the forest of decisions. We hope that one of them or a combination of them gets us to the answer quickly.  Paul and I have also chatted about the common sense approach to design: should we  sometimes  rely on our own experience or instinct to guide decision making (also referred to as Dan Saffer’s “genius” centered design approach)? It seems like even this cost-efficient “gut” check, however, can get us into deep water.

As we continue to grow up in a world of increasingly sophisticated interactions and product experiences, it’s important to understand how we arrive at conclusions about which design paths to take.

All this recent thinking provoked me to ask these questions about design research methods and tools: Wwhat’s the best mix of data and methods?  How much of it is driven by common sense? How do we know when we arrive at the best possible solution?

Wolfram Alpha is a knowledge engine based on Mathematica. Here’s an interesting article giving hints on what it is, and how it could impact how we look for answers online. What will be your first question for Wolfram Alpha?