Design and the internet of things

With everything from our phones, to fridges, boilers, energy meters and the television demanding attention from us in the 'internet of things', we will need to change our approach to information interaction. It won't be possible to interact with everything that is generating data, so we will need a different approach to interfaces. Make sense of and making use of these data streams will demand great new ways of presenting and engaging with data.

With many more devices and sensors offering us data, and asking for our attention, will we need to rethink the way we use this data? What will need to change so that we can handle data from many sources at once, as well as the potential interactions between devices? What novel ways of interacting might be needed to make the best use of the new technologies that are starting to become mainstream?

Russell Davies has written a great introduction to the internet of things for the BBC as part of their Four Thought series.

BERG is a design consultancy in London, and is well known for some experimental work in the area of new interfaces and the internet of things.

One example of this is the Media Surfaces project, which looks at how media might migrate across everyday surfaces. The ideas of this 'alternative future are expressed in two films for the project.

There have been a number of attempts to display energy usage in the home in more interest ways, including a dynamic wallpaper that responded with a changing design and lamps that project different colours to represent different data.  

There have also been devices like DIY Kyoto's Wattson, a desktop or shelf device that displays figures and also changes colour in response to energy use.

Wired wrote a piece last year on augmented reality and the internet of things that highlights that some data are best consumed in aggregate, after the fact, and others are useful to have in real-time.

Qualcomm are talking about mobile devices as a "window onto the internet of things", suggesting that smartphones and other devices might form the main interaction device for connected objects around us.

We will add to this list after the event - please let us know if you have suggestions for other links we could include.