Smart products can be defined as products that perform functions through dynamic, real-time interaction with users and information processing. They aim to seamlessly meet task and human requirements without being intrusive. However, a lack of shared definitions can lead to incompatibilities. The human element of interactions with smart products is important. User needs can only be understood through analyzing everyday contexts of use. Smart products may learn and adapt through use over time. Their ability to customize automatically or interface with customization depends on the complexity of processing relevant to human intervention.

1. Defining smart products
Derek Nicoll
Derek Nicoll

2. Why define ‘smart’, ‘intelligent’ or
‘information intensive’ products
Definitions serve as conceptual apparatus whereby we can
develop a shared sensibility about a phenomena, event, or
object
Lack of a shared definition means that different people,
institutions, agencies etc. have different perceptions,
expectations and anticipations regarding the same thing
Lack of shared definitions can lead to interesting avenues of
innovation: example: video formats
But lack of shared definition can lead to incompatibilities,
competition or even misconceptions
There is yet no fixed, universal definition of smart technology

3. Those products addressing a function,
not intrinsically information oriented in
nature, exhibiting dynamic, real time
interaction with users, and making use of
considerable information processing or
manipulation.
(Fleck, Molina and Nicoll, 1997)

4. Some key technologies :
Sensors, transducers and associated signal
processing methods
Self-learning adaptive systems and neural networks:
Chips
Mechanotronics, e.g. robotics
Alternative input-output devices, e.g. bio-electric
interfaces, tactile displays, gesture recognition
Efficient low volume manufacturing technologies

5. Key Applications
Manufacturing
Military
Retail
Logistics
Homes and lifestyles

6. But why smart products?
Perennial demand to make tasks easier, more time
efficient, simpler, frictionless, cost-effective, comfortable -
all human perceptions of use - we all want life to be less
arduous, more delightful: continuing the tradition of
domestic labour-saving devices
An attempt to account for obvious deficiencies in current
provisions or human capabilities (i.e. handicaps, lack of
expertise)
PR opportunities (smart products make good news print)
Changes in the consumer/market landscape, cultural
trends, changing demographics etc.

7. Should smart products involve more
than technological innovation?
Are technologists are running out of ‘more
obvious’ targets? In an age of ‘user-focused design
and ‘customer-led’ marketing smart products do appear
unabashedly technology driven.
– the search for new applications for digital technology
– desire to exploit advances in materials science

8. What distinguishes smart products?
They are more than technological
and design innovation
The most distinguishing aspect of smart products is an
objective to seamlessly meet task and human
requirements: They should not be ‘in your face’
To do this suggests a design sensitivity matching
technical potentials to both explicit and implicit user
needs and requirements
We are speaking here of a need then for designers to
have at hand significantly richer knowledge of the
contingencies of use and usage than has previously
been demanded by design products

9. The human element of
machine-human
interaction?
The circumstances motivating and shaping
particular instances of use
The users perception of ease of use (explicit) or
assistance to perform a task (implicit) - usability
The circumstances motivating and shaping patterns
of use i.e. usage
The perception, engendering and institution of
usefulness

10. There are always three basic
ways in which technologies are
used and incorporated into the
lives of their users . . .

11. As intended and anticipated by
designers and marketers -
Intentions and
use anticipation of use
and value
Simple and
mature
Purpose defined by technologies
producers. But even
a tin opener could be Tin
used as a weapon Opener

12. In ways which contradict these
intentions and anticipations
Purpose was defined largely by use and users
Knowledge and
anticipation of
use and value
use
Radical and emergent
technologies
Telephone

13. In a much more ‘negotiated’ fashion
User- Developers
consumers
Domestication Intentions
use a need for greater and
awareness of use anticipation
and users by of use and
designers and value
producers

14. The human element of machine-
human interaction
Technologies, if successful, if they ‘fit’, are
situated, naturalised, phenomena
They not only contribute to the environments of
everyday life, but support, and through their
design, define lifestyle and activity
But how do they become ‘domesticated’?
Socio- cultural factors i.e
• Rules governing use
• Social acceptability of use
Cognitive- psychological factors i.e.
• Needs motivating use
• Feelings about use

15. Problem - the time, space and
place of contexts
Context of design: designers inevitably begin by designing for themselves - their
conceptions of what is needed - constrained by what is available - what is known
to them
Context of use: The interaction between people and their domestic contexts . . .has
been neglected in both architectural and psychological circles. Yandell (1995)
So the need for contextual studies – independent evaluation of design, efficiency (of
machine or human?) with respect to task
Herbert Simons ‘ant’ - complexity may reside in the environment - people often
think of the environment to be something to be ‘acted upon’ rather than
something to be ‘interacted with’
The problems of tacit knowledge - Polanyi (1966) demonstrates that we can know
more than we can say: humans make excellent use of tacit knowledge.
anaphora, ellipses, unstated shared understanding are all used in the service of
our collaborative relationships with each other, and how we define things and
tasks on a social level

16. Needs can only be revealed by
analysing conflicts and opportunities
of everyday life. Because most
innovations have roots in existing
technology, observing and analysing
problems and possibilities of existing
technology can provide insights not
only for technical innovation, but use
innovation

17. But the nature of smart products
emphasise the need for developers to
‘get closer still’ to consumer-users as true for
next generation Tamagotchis as it is to anti-lock brakes
and smart dust

18. Human and social factors and the time, space
and place of contexts
During the early 90s HCI researchers began to show an interest
in context, situation and environment. This led to the
development of usability studies which took more notice of
context – i.e. Contextual Inquiry (Holtzblatt and Jones; 1992),
Contextual Usability (Nicoll, 1994)
Contexts – individual, cognitive, experiential, social, political,
physical, cultural, educational etc.

19. Back to the technology -
taxonomy of smart products
“Those products addressing a function, not intrinsically
information oriented in nature, exhibiting dynamic, real time
interaction with users, and making use of considerable
information processing or manipulation.”
•Function
•Information
•Time
•Interaction
•Information processing

20. Function
Smart products, as opposed to orthodox products - may work best
when their functionality is not consciously registered by the user -
example: intelligent lifts. This may be a problem for evaluation.
A smart product can interface people with people, people with
organisations, people with their environments, between people and
tasks. As such they must be acknowledged as a social as well as
individual and personal technology - example: smart housing for aged
or disabled where human monitoring and observation is needed
In some cases smart products short circuit human activity, in others
they augment and even extend activity - example: ‘intuitive’ automation
self-diagnostic and repair systems or intelligent help systems

21. Information
People and their lifestyles, objects and
their biographies, generate useful
information for design and business
Behavioural sciences examine the past
to describe and explain behaviour while
designers and new users have a strong
future orientation
Capturing patterns and styles of use can
inform new product ideas, anticipating
uses more accurately
Evolutionary function and features
depend on a constant flow of data and
information
Stock control, post-Fordist manufacture,
customization all rely strongly on
accurate information flows

22. Time
Real time - response to
use and usage or/and to
immediate and changing
environmental conditions.
Dynamic and non-linear -
real life use can through up
some ‘spanners in the
works’ for self-learning
systems which would, like
retail and manufacturing
businesses prefer that use
and consumption styles
and patterns remained
stable and predictable

23. Interaction &
Information processing
Smart products can be understood to communicate in a
number of different ways . . .
Communication between technologies
(scenarios and automation)
Communication mediated by technology -
between the individual, outside agencies,
services and other people (daily routines)
Communication between the technology and
outside agencies (monitoring and surveillance)
Communication between the technologies
and the individuals (personal habits and
activities)

24. So where are smart
products - and come to that,
where are we going?

25. Where are we going?
“By his very success in inventing labor-saving
devices, modern man has manufactured an
abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes
in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed . . . the
notion that automation give any guarantee of
human liberation is a piece of wishful
thinking.”Lewis Mumford - The Challenge of Renewal, 1951.

26. So where are smart products
going?
Technologies which learn and
respond - that cocoon, enable,
contain - is this the new
paradigm for design?
Deturo-learning or learning II was originally suggested by Bateson
(1972), with respect to evolution, and more recently by Argyris and
Schön (1996) in their discussion of organisational learning

27. Smart products their ability to learn?
Level
of
learni
ng
Learning III
Learning II
Evolution
Learning 1
of
‘smartness
Learning 0
’
Complexity of processing
independent of human
intervention

28. Smart products their ability to learn?
Level of Stimulus relations Technology Pavlovian Outcome
learning to outcome equivalent
Learning 0 Hard-wired – one Hand held tools Salivating while eating food Direct response
to one stimulus-
response
Learning I Analogy – a Pressing a Linking the sound of a bell to Leaned response – based on
mapping of button an anticipation of the arrival of trial and error
stimulus to food
Behavior
Learning II Generalization – Neural nets and Linking other relevant sounds Generalizing what is learned to
i.e. for the masses automated to salivation – i.e. Refrigerator other instances
– linking stimulus technologies door opening or the
to behaviors with some development of develop a finer
ability to learn discrimination i.e. higher
from use, or of pitched rings, or finding that
their other behaviours such as sitting
enviroment and begging results in a higher
chance of being fed,
Learning III Customization – Smart Different sets of results As the learner moves to
linking stimulus/es technology? operating within different sets Learning III, he or she is able to
to a variety of of occasions - What codify those sets of choices and
contingencies behaviours, in what situations, to actively choose from
are most likely to result in me different sets in different
getting fed?) situations in order to
consistently achieve a desired
outcome.

29. Smart products their ability to learn?
Level
of
learni
ng
Learning III
Learning II
Evolution
Learning 1
of
‘smartness
Learning 0
’
Complexity of processing
independent of, BUT
RELEVANT TO
human intervention

30. The functionality of smart products is
sensitive to their use and to changing
environmental (or use) conditions.
They customize automatically or they
interface customization. They may be
discretely intelligent or rendered
intelligent by performing as part of a
communication system or network.

31. Conclusion - Defining smart products help us to:
Fully or truly understand the technology - its potentials and
possibilities to organise, assist, surprise and delight
Understand potential use value against richer and deeper
understandings of possible and actual use contexts
Develop sensibilities towards open, flexible and approaches to
innovation sensitive to real world needs. When human-human
collaboration becomes human-computer-human co-active
collaboration, we must address explicitly issues of tacit
knowledge and the human unconscious in relation to function
Most importantly; realise how human and socio-cultural trends
- such as the rise of the ‘always-on’ society and the ‘24-hour
world’ begin to cocoon people. They drive new needs
independent of and dependent upon emerging technology

32. Thank you