Week Seven: Reading Week

I did not need to attend class this week, as it was a pseudo reading week for our interaction design laboratory. I used the time gained to conduct a questionnaire for my research project. My research project is based on the question: “Can ambient intelligence technology be designed and employed in an office environment to aid an individual with a moderate autistic spectrum disorder?” This subject interests me greatly and I have been enjoying the tasks thoroughly.

In the lecture we went through different methods of finding research material online. This should prove useful for researching ambient intelligence and autistic spectrum disorder. I also learnt about the evolution of the television and the increasingly prevalent use of second screens. The use of a second screen allows viewers to interact with the content they're viewing in real-time. Lastly, I received my coursework results; I managed to get 88% and am happy with that result.

Whilst I have been studying human-computer interaction, I have stumbled upon a variant of this study called human-environment interaction. This involves ambient intelligent devices and a principle called the ‘disappearing computer’. The computer is hidden from the user and integrated into ‘smart’ environments. One way to achieve this would be to study existing physical objects and to augment their physical properties with computers that extend their functions.