Ambient computing

Computing woven into an environment, responding to context without requiring a screen to mediate every action.

The reports below explore systems that act around people. The Auxetic Lens keeps attention on legibility, permission and reversibility: reducing interface burden should not make decisions invisible.

Practical guidance

CONTINUUM coverage

  1. The Link Becomes Legible

    Adaptation becomes more trustworthy when the relationship doing the work can be inspected, corrected and refused.

  2. The Handle Is the Signal

    The humane handle is often not a new control, but the smallest trustworthy signal that tells adaptation when—and how—to move.

  3. The Condition Sets the Control

    Adaptation becomes useful when its control variable meets the condition a person can see, feel or correct.

  4. Restraint Becomes a Feature

    Ambient computing becomes more useful when it removes weight, capture, explicit targeting or premature interpretation.

  5. Before You Ask

    The useful proactive home will know when to act—and when attention itself becomes an intrusion.

  6. The Handoff Is the Computer

    The next personal computer may be the relationship among objects—and the quality of every handoff between them.

  7. Interfaces Become Systems

    The ambient computer is becoming a designed relationship among objects, not another object.

  8. Wearables, Unbundled

    The next wearable may be less a single object than an adaptable relationship between body, device, network, and place.

Sources in this coverage