Let's Talk about .. TRONSHOW2011

On December 15, 2010, I found the information posted by Kieng, my friend from the University of Tokyo, about TRONSHOW2011, so I went to listen to the international session.

The 27th TRON Project Symposium (TRONSHOW2011) is during December 15-17, 2010 at Tokyo Midtown, Japan. It is organized by T-Engine Forum.

Method of Identify Location

The Light Flexible Speaker (TLF-SP)

Tokyo Ubiquitous Technology Project

The session I participated was "Globalizing Ubiquitous Computing"

Prof. Ken Sakamura, a coordinator

First is the talk of "Globalizing Ubiquitous Computing"

Globalizing Ubiquitous Computing 

Dr. Gerald Santucci

By Dr.Gerald Santucci, head of unit "Networked Enterprise & RFID", European Commission 

He talked about nowadays, there are many Internet of Things such as Smart Building, Smart Energy, Smart Health, Smart Cities, Smart Transport, and Smart Living. PM of China said also last year that "Internet of Things is the wisdom of the earth". There are 3 underlying trends: Scale, Mobility, Heterogeneity & Complexity. There is a research said that everyone use 5,000 things.  Future Internet challenges consist of more storage, more addresses, more transport capacity , making tech ology compatible, Internet for all, better search tool, from data to knowledge.  

A definition of the Intetnet of Things by Dr. Gerald Santucci

The Internet of Things (IoT) as an Integral Part of the future Internet A dynamic global network infrastructure with self-configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual "things" have identities, physical attributes, and virtual things.

EU IoT Project 

Cluster Activities Organized activity chains in the area of: Architecture approaches, models, naming, search, discover; Government issues, Privacy and security; Links to nation, etc.

IoT EU Policy Framework Europe's action plan
- Privacy and data protection; 'right to the silence of the chips' 1991 Internet was invented, started using in 1993, but well-known in 1995.
- Standardization, there should no barrier to train people.
- Research
- Waste management, when all technological devices go to the end of usage period.
- International dialogue
- Innovation
- Government
- Trust, security, and acceptance  

Internet of Things Governance

Action 1: Define a set of principles for IoT governance
Design an "architecture" with a sufficient level of decentralised management to address key challenges: avoidance of a single point-of-failure, service tranferability, interoperability ofn every level, security, scalability, technology-neutrality...

Action 2:
- Continuous monitoring of privacy and personal data protection
- Communication on trust and privacy in the ubiquitous society

Action 3: The "right to the silence of the chips": individuals should be able to disconnect from their networked environment at any time.

Action 4: The Commission will follow ENISA work on the identification of emerging risks and provide a policy framework to develop IoT.

Action 5: The Commission will follow the development of IoT infrastructures becoming a vital resource to economy and society.

Action 6:
- Launch or extend currently standards Mandates to include issues related to IoT
- Ensure IoT standards are developed in an open, transparent and consensual manner

Action 7: Finance research projects through FP7 projects.

Action 8: Contribute to the respective Public-Private Partnerships:
- Green cars
- Energy-efficient buildings
- Factories of the Future
- Future Internet

Action 9: Innovation and pilot projects: promoting the deployment of IoT applications by launching pilot projects though ICT-PSP.

Action 10: The Commission will inform Europe Institutions and relevant stakeholders about IoT developments.

Action 11: International dialogue to promote the lines of action laid down in the Communication

Action 12: To assess the difficulties of recycling tags and the benefits and nuisances that the presence of tags can have on the recycling of objects.

Action 13: Monitoring the introduction of IoT related technologies to allow the assessment of their impact as well as the effectiveness of the related Community policies

Action 14: The Commission will assess the evolution of IoT

Internet of Things Architecture 

Alessandro Blassi

By Mr.Alessandro Blassi, Technical Coordinator of the FP7 IP Project "Internet of Things Architecture", Hitachi Europe Ltd. 

Only a few people imagined in last ten years ago that today we have smart phone that can send e-mail like today. There are many Internet involved things around us such as Smart house, business productive, safe health monitoring, logistics. IoT-A will be laying the foundation for such a future.  

For Current status, it's Fragmented architecture, no coherent unifying concepts, solution exist for only application silos. No coherent approaches to implement the IoT.  Many island solutions do exist (RFID, sensor, etc.)  

The objectives of IoT-A
- Removing the barriers of deployment and widescale acceptance of IoT
- Demonstrating the usability of IoT-A

Means of implementation
- Providing a protocol suite based on open protocols centred around a narrow waste
- Defining a novel resolution infrastructure
- Building novel device platform components
- Implementing real-life use cases

Spiral Development of IoT-A

Spiral Development by Alessandro Blassi

IoT-A will work with T-Engine. 

If you want to get involve and contribute to IoT-A, the IoT-A need you, you can become a IoT-A stakeholder by going the website http://www.IoT-a.eu/stakeholder  

Key Driver for ubiquitous network 

By Prof.Dr.Ryo Imura, Executive Officer, Hitachi Information Systems, Ltd. and Professor of the University of Tokyo. 

Prof. Ryo Imura, Dr. Gerald Santucci, and Alessandro Blassi

By  Essential point is how smart and how beneficial to our daily life.  The technology, especially IoT is already embedded in our daily life. We need to win the technology by using our creativity. After that it's the discussion between him and Dr.Gerald and Alessandro.

After that there's a continuing talk about China's case.

Ref.

[1] Summarized from Santucci, G., Blassi, A., and Imura, R., the international session "Globalizing Ubiquitous Computing" , the 27th TRON Project Symposium, Tokyo, Japan, Dec 15, 2010.

Let's Talk about .. Gerontechnology

On December 9th, 2010, I went to the AIST Gerontechnology Forum 2010 / International Society for Gerontechnology Japan Chapter, organized by Affective Laboratory of TokyoTech at AIST Tokyo Waterfront conference room (11th floor), Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan. I joined the workshop of Designing for Older Adults: Human Factor Approaches by Prof.Dr. Wendy A. Rogers and Prof.Dr. Arthur D. Fisk from Human Factors & Aging Laboratory, School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.

Assoc.Prof. Hiroyuki Umemuro opened the workshop

Prof. Wendy A. Rogers

Prof. Arthur Dan Fisk

Aging Demographic
From the research, 65-year-old Japanese men is expected to live more 23 years in the future and longer for women. Around 68.8 % of Japanese is going to continue working when they are older.

In US, 65+ are living alone for 15% men and 30% women. Over 50% of them is hypertension, and other deceases. It means they need to use the medical activities. There is an increase rate of computer use for 65+ from 20 to 40% 2010 comparing with 2000. The frequent process 65+ people do is open a file, save a file, and use a printer. About Internet usage, it's quite similar with the computer usage (10 to 40%). For Japan, it is also increases.

Older adults' capabilities and limitations

Process of aging
Primary aging
- Normal, disease free development during adulthood (inevitable)
Secondary aging
- Developmental changes related to disease, lifestyle, environmental factor
- Tertiary aging
- Rapid loss in organs

Movement control limitations
- Response time slows and more variable

Percentage of people in each age that require visual correction, Cataracts, Glaucoma or other Visual Impairments

The need of visual correction increases when people grow older, the maximum is around 60 plus. The speech intelligibility is also going down when people grow older.

Cognitive aging
Decline in
- Working memory
- attention limits
- Multiple tasking
Some remain intact
- Verbal ability
- General knowledge
- Schemas and scripts
- Previous experience
- Metacognition

Design guidelines

The general way of guideline is to view an older as adult's system as "a noisy information channel". We need to boost the signal strength, like increase the size of visual objects (font size, icon size). And decrease the noise, like isolate messages from other message channels, and maintaining the consistent positioning of target items.

Good design for text
- Black on white 28 point is better than gray and smaller font

Design input device
- Match it with the task demands
- Direct: for pure pointing and clicking tasks
- Indirect: experienced users, combined input tasks,large movements, precision
- Speech recognition: restrictions in manual dexterity; low ambient noise level
- Keyboard input

- Use large keys with clear markings and inter-key spacing

- Provide tactile and auditory feedback with keypads

Remote example

Comparison of good and bad design of remote control

The bad design showed that its buttons are too close together and it's black on gray color.

Design output device
- High contrast between characters and background
- Text size 0.6 degrees of visual angle or greater on display
- Shield visual output screens from glare
- Provide an adaptive, adjustable display (with instruction)
- Important warning message

Interface design
- Minimize clutter
- Visual: too many display items in any one location

- Auditory: too many sounds to make sense out of such as warning tones

- Cognitive: too many things to keep in memory

- Movement related: too many or too small response items

- Ensure that characters and targets are conspicuous and accessible

- Font size less than 12 should be avoided

- Icons should be large enough to select easily

- Auditory information should be presented at the proper pitch, frequency, and rate

Interface design-Navigation
- Screen scrolling should be minimized ( especially horizontal scrolling)
- Provide the site map
- Provide search history
- Indicate clearly where the user currently is
- Provide the navigation assistance for linking

Interface design - information organization
- Frequent and important actions should be easily visible and accessible

- Optimize information organization within natural or consistent groupings

- Develop the menu structure to match medium

One of the good examples is the web site that we can search by both letter and category.

Example of bad design of web page

Example of better design of web page

You can see the tips at Making Your Website Senior Friendly (National Institute on Aging and the National Library of Medicine).

Anyway, the Golden rule is a user testing.

Involving older adults
Methods in the human factor & aging lab
- Questionnaires
- Structured Interviews
- Diary Studies
- Observation

- Experiments

- Field Trials

General consideration
Selecting a representative sample
- depends on research question
Aging in place issues
Technology use problem (user testing)
Benefit of computer system in home

Structuring testing environment
- Minimize distractions and ambient noise
- Ensure adequate lighting
- Adjust screens to accommodate size differences and eyeglasses
- Comfortable chairs
Actually, it is important for everyone, but especially for older adults.

Format of materials
- High contrast text of background
- 6th grade reading level
- Minimize jargon
- > 14 point San serif font
- Avoid fancy font, even it looks fun

Framing your questions
- Distance yourself from developer
- Use reminder
- Provide scenario to elicit opinion
- Video or demonstration of technology
- Goals

Pacing of events & Timing of sessions
- Recognize that environment may be foreign to older adults
- Allow time to get acclimated
- Sequence task easy to difficult
- Provide basic instructions
- Assume 1.5 times needed by younger
- Allow time to break

Pilot test everything
- clarity of instruction
- working of materials
- timing of tasks and overall session
- explain pilot testing to participants open and honest

Technology Acceptance
Attitudes
- Identify barriers to adoption
- Instrusiveness, privacy, security concerns
- Conditional adoption

Older adult does not use tech as much as younger adult. They concern about tech description, and others.

Introduction new technology to older adults
- Recognize their unique preferences, capabilities, limitation, and experiences
- Provide written, well-designed instructional material
- Ensure that perceptions are accurate reflections of the complexity and ease of use of the technology
- Do not assume users will understand why technology might be useful to them, make benefits explicit

I like the sentence that they mention during the discussion period, "We should not think about what technology can do, but we should think about what the technology should do."

For more information, you can visit their website at http://psychology.gatech.edu/hfa

Ref.

[1] Summarized from Workshop: Designing for Older Adults: Human Factor Approaches by Prof.Dr. Wendy A. Rogers and Prof.Dr. Arthur D. Fisk, AIST Gerontechnology Forum 2010, December 9, 2010.