Summary

The Internet of Things is about equipping more and more real world objects with a virtual representation in the Internet. On the other side more and more human computer interaction work deals with stationary objects in the real world – e.g. large public or semi-public displays. In this talk I will start reporting on our past work on large interactive displays in semi-public spaces (the CommunityMirrors project), and then focus on a project in which we are currently building smart urban objects to ensure safe mobility in urban areas for older adults. The focus of the UrbanLife+ project is on stationary public objects in the urban space in the contrast to mobile personal objects as it is often seen in other IoT undertakings. The presentation will show the potential of connecting real world objects in public space with the Internet to make a real difference. I also will address the four Human Computer Interaction meta challenges to make the vision real: adaptability, multi-user-ability, walk-up-and-use-ability and joy-of-use, and illustrate them with examples from the field of smart urban objects.

Vita

Michael Koch Michael Koch is professor for Human-Computer Interaction at Universität der Bundeswehr München in Munich, Germany. Previously he was working in industry at the Xerox Research Centre Europe and at TU München, University Dortmund and University Bremen. He studied Informatics at TU München, and received in 1997 a doctorate (PhD) in Informatics and in 2003 the Habilitation (post-doctoral lecturer qualification) in Informatics from the same university. For the last 20 years Michael has been dedicated to creating usable systems in work and leisure contexts (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work). His main interests in research and education are shaping cooperation systems, i.e. bringing collaboration technology to use in teams, communities and networks, and bringing integration and user interface technologies one step further to support this. He is chairman of the special interest area on Human-Computer-Interaction in the German Computer Society (GI) and member of the boards of German ACM SIGCHI Chapter and the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET).