(Em)Powering Smart Cities
Designing for Resiliency in the Leapfrog Age
ICMAC 2017, Denpasar, Bali
i'm dietrich ayala, and i work for the internet.
* most know us by firefox
* but firefox is a tool we use to guide the direction of web tech
* why does mozilla want to talk about smart cities at an event like this?
* care and feeding tech for healthy and successful innovation for people
* you're making decisions now about privacy, security and what technologies to use
* and we want to see you succeed
* we want to see your innovations work for *everyone*
"Within bitsphere communities, there will be subnetworks at a smaller scale still – that of architecture. Increasingly, computers will meld seamlessly into the fabric of buildings and buildings themselves will become computers – the outcome of a long evolution."
William J. Mitchell,
City of Bits (1995).
* interestingly, the network turned out to be *people*
* buildings as computers is really only starting
* and i don't think we're ready yet
* people engaging in community through for-profit verticalized apps
* standards for privacy and security at substructure layer are not mature
* which means the market is flowing with technology and products untrusted by consumers
* additionally, the tech we're building now will be obsolete in a few years
* how to build for a moving target? huge investments into massive projects with predictable obsolescence
* the stack today looks like this
* some of these are proprietary silos
* some are aging infrastructure
* some have no security or privacy standards
* hackers are using this one to run botnets
* what do thomas jefferson, leon trotsky and buddha have in common?
* tj said each generation should have a revolution
* trotsky thought permanent revolution was key to true communism
* the buddha teaches us impermanency in every moment
* they all designed for constant change
* designing for permanent state of leapfrogginess
* probably not possible, or even desirable
* but i'm going to talk about some patterns for designing technology that can do that
* specifically i'm going to talk about how to engage and empower users in relevant ways in public spaces
* example of advanced smart cities program
*
* right now room scale computing looks like this
Open or Install?
URL or App?
- easier to get someone to open a URL than to install an app
- instant content vs multiple steps
- ux and ix make the difference in access to information and services
* bluetooth
* good for multi-floor spaces
* configurable radio signal for distance
* google backported nearby to Android Kit Kat, 4.4
* get notification as users experience a space
* potential for notification storm, abuse
SPEECH
NOISE!
* a lot of talk about speech recognition
* but differences in the ambient decibel level are a signal
* you don't need fancy speech recognition to know if someone walked in the room
* or if someone is asleep vs awake
* but how do you know if there's a computer in the room?
* how do you know if something is listening?
* noise can be a signaller for presence/absence and whether to send notification, have the robot say "hi", etc
* proximity
* also explored privacy concerns
* signaling in public spaces
* but what to do once you've got people connected?
PATTERNS
& FLOW
* onboarding technology has led to new software inputs
* and requires new patterns and task flows in our designs
➡️ 
➡️ URL
➡️ app
* now we've got an interaction flow going
* and with PWA we have things like push notifications
* so we can re-engage during app switching or whatever as someone moves through a space
* complex topology in our interactions
* bluetooth mesh spec is coming soon
➡️
➡️ URL
➡️ 
➡️
➡️ URL
➡️ 
➡️
➡️ URL
➡️ Payment API
➡️ 💰💰💰
PaymentRequest Example
var request = new PaymentRequest(
supportedPaymentMethods,
paymentDetails,
options
);
request.show();
➡️
➡️ URL
➡️ AR / VR
Web Manifest
ServiceWorkers
Push Notifications
getUserMedia()
navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({
audio: true,
video: true
}).then(function (stream) {
// do something with the stream
})
A-Frame Example
<a-scene>
<a-sphere radius="1.25"></a-sphere>
<a-box width="1" height="1" depth="1"></a-box>
<a-cylinder radius="0.5" height="1.5"></a-cylinder>
<a-plane rotation="-90 0 0" width="4" height="4"></a-plane>
</a-scene>
INVISIBLE
COMPUTING
* too many apps
* not enough choice
* but we're moving into an era of invisible computing
* right now the apps are at least visible
* is this the roomscale endgame?
* it's not the future we want
* but what's really going on is this.
* this is the new web
* integrated multisensory physical+digital experiences
* bridging platforms
* frictionless physical interaction flows
* ubiquitous physical computing
* mobile
*
* the hardware isn't here yet. but it's not far off.
* native and proprietary tech is here to stay in some form.
* the web is ready to glue these things together
* to make really interesting things
* and these are things you can do *now*
*
* we need a responsive design for physical spaces
* we need a design language for physical interactions
* if we wait, amazon, google, apple will design this language for us
* using hardware to define the spaces we can design for
* but with the open web we have an opportunity now
* to get ready for these quickly coming technologies
* and fight the hegemony of the few big hardware providers
* and define the interactions we want to see.
* they all designed for constant change
* flexible and resilient infrastructure in our technologies
* not only resilient to change, but inviting and encouraging of it.
* so that we can quickly adapt to what an immediately-different future brings
Dietrich Ayala
@dietrich
