PANEL SESSION: Wednesday, May 7, 4:00 - 5:30pm How Should We Evaluate Systems Contributions to Ubicomp?
Panelists:
Ubiquitous computing is inherently multidisciplinary: it comprises
systems, human-computer interaction, AI, industrial design, mechanical
engineering, and a host of other disciplines. From the point of view of
computer science, ubicomp is also fundamentally about systems building:
we are architecting and implementing systems that will interact directly
with the end user. For this very reason, some of the "traditional"
criteria by which "classical" systems work has been evaluated are not
easily applied to ubicomp. As a result, it is often difficult to
discuss the merit of systems-centric ubicomp papers, especially for
forums that solicit interdisciplinary work such as MobiSys, UbiComp, and
PerComm. For example, performance may not be critical when system
response time requirements are dominated by human-scale latencies.
Scalability may not be a concern if a system is designed for localized
deployment, such as an auditorium or a building rather than an entire
campus. On the other hand, failure resilience is still important, but
we must consider the effects of a failure on the user experience as well
as on the behavior of the system. Similarly, extensibility,
programmability and maintainability become critical if we expect these
systems to survive a long time and be subject to ongoing evolution.
Do we need a new look at evaluation criteria for systems contributions to
ubicomp? Should systems researchers be working much more closely with
HCI and other practitioners, and if so, precisely how should we expect
such collaborations to change the tactics or research foci of systems
folks? Even if we know what systems properties we want to measure, are
we using the right _metrics_ for measuring them in a ubicomp
environment?
We will hear about this topic from academic researchers and industry
practitioners who have architected, designed, implemented, and deployed
mobile or ubiquitous computing systems to actual users.
Keith Edwards is a Senior Member of Research Staff at the Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC), where he leads the Speakeasy project on
evolvable interoperation in ad hoc networks. Keith's research
interests sit at the intersection of distributed systems and human
computer interaction--how systems concerns "show through" to the user
experience and, in turn, how the requirements of the user experience
manifest themselves in the system. Recently, he has been working to
understand how to apply user-centered design and evaluation techniques
to the creation of infrastructure technologies.
Anthony LaMarca is a member of the research staff at Intel Research Seattle.
His research interests include ubiquitous computing, distributed systems and
human-centered design. He is currently developing techniques for making
ubiquitous computing systems easier to deploy and maintain. He has a BS in
computer science from the University of California at Berkeley and an MS and
PhD is computer science from the University of Washington. He can be
contacted at lamarca@intel-research.net.
Brian Noble is the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Assistant
Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
department at the University of Michigan. His research centers on
software supporting mobile devices and their users. He completed the
PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in 1998, and is
a recipient of the NSF CAREER award.
Yi-Min Wang led the Aladdin team to build a remote home automation system.
The system uses soft-state-based lookup services to integrate diverse
powerline and phoneline devices, and makes the devices accessible to
homeowners when they are away from home. They can send an email to close the
garage door, receive a cell phone message when the refrigerator is leaking,
or get notified by an IM when the kids come back home from school. The
Aladdin system has been deployed in an actual house for three years and used
by the homeowners on a daily basis.
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