Abstract. A motivation behind much UbiComp research has been to make our lives convenient, comfortable and informed, following in the footsteps of Weiser’s calm computing vision. Three themes that have dominated are context awareness, ambient intelligence and monitoring/tracking. While these avenues of research have been fruitful their accomplishments do not match up to anything like Weiser’s world. This paper discusses why this is so and argues that is time for a change of direction in the field. An alternative agenda is outlined that focuses on engaging rather than calming people. Humans are very resourceful at exploiting their environments and extending their capabilities using existing strategies and tools. I describe how pervasive technologies can be added to the mix, outlining three areas of practice where there is much potential for professionals and laypeople alike to combine, adapt and use them in creative and constructive ways.

We describe the motivations behind the E-Sense project which will investigate augmented perception by building a range of novel tactile interfaces. As well as exploring the practical utility of these systems for real world tasks, we are particularly interested in the following question: how can we design tactile interfaces to mediate novel sensory information so that the user experiences the technology as an extension of themselves?

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This Editorial lead paper for the Journal of Location Based Services surveys this complex and multi-disciplinary field and identifies the key research issues. Although this field has produced early commercial disappointments, the inevitability that pervasive location-aware services on mobile devices will emerge means that much research is needed to inform these developments. The paper reviews firstly: the science and technology of positioning, geographic information science, mobile cartography, spatial cognition and interfaces, information science, ubiquitous computing; and secondly the business, content and legal, social and ethics aspects, before synthesising the key issues for this new field.

Sensor-based interaction has enabled a variety of new creative practices. With ubiquitous computing, designing for creative user experience with sensor-based devices benefits from new opportunities as well as new challenges. We propose a design approach where surrounding context information is brought to the foreground to become a resource for interaction, available at hand and in real time to the users. We illustrate this approach with our project context photography as a design case. Context photography consists of taking still pictures that capture not only incoming light but also some of the additional context surrounding the scene, with real-time context information visually affecting the pictures as they are taken. Based on the design and use of our context camera prototypes, this paper brings insight into implications of our approach to the design of sensor-based ubiquitous computing systems for creative purposes.

and other research outputs The changing face of human-computer interaction in the age of ubiquitous computing Book Chapter How to cite: Rogers, Yvonne (2009). The changing face of human-computer interaction in the age of ubiquitous

An assumption behind new interface approaches that employ physical means of interaction is that these can leverage users ’ prior knowledge from the real world, making them intuitive or ‘natural ’ to use. This paper presents a user study of tangible augmented reality, which shows that physical input tools can invite a wide variety of interaction behaviours and raise unmatched expectations about how to interact. Children played with interactive sequences in an augmented book using physical paddles to control the main characters. Our analysis focuses on how knowledge and skills that children have from the physical world succeed or fail to apply in the interaction with this application. We found that children expected the digital augmentations to behave and react analogous to physical 3D objects, encouraged by the ability to act in 3D space and the (digital) visual feedback. The affordances of the paddles as physical interaction devices invited actions that the system could not detect or interpret. In effect, children often struggled to

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and other research outputs Feel the force: Using tactile technologies to investigate the extended mind

and other research outputs Of pages and paddles: children’s expectations and mistaken interactions with physical–digital tools Journal Article