Keynote at Internet Technologies & Applications (ITA17), Wrexham, North Wales, UK, 14th Sept 2017 This talk presented ways to design both the user experience and the underlying application, data and networking infrastructure to cope with poor or intermittent connectivity. http://alandix.com/academic/papers/ITA-communicating-in-wales-2017/

1. Communicating in Wales:
design and architecture for mobile
applications over poor connectivity
Alan Dix
http://alanwalks.wales/

2. Tiree
Tiree Tech Wave
26-30 Oct 2017
University of
Birmingham

3. today I am not talking about …
• physicality and product design
• long tail of small data
• community technology
• intelligent internet interfaces
• digital humanities
• creativity and Bad Ideas
• visualisation and sampling
• situated displays
• virtual crackers and slow time
• modelling dreams and regret
• the emergence of self

4. not to mention …
REF

5. I am talking about …
connectivity
… or the lack of it!

6. poor connectivity
three aspects:
• user experience
• architecture and infrastructure
• policy
… but first a little about a walk

8. walking Wales
1058 miles (1700 km) around
around the margins of Wales

9. Welsh Coast Path
opened May 2012
linking existing paths
a single way marked route
with Offa’s Dyke encircles Wales
three full traversals in 2012 (one running)

10. vision
personal
encircling, encompassing, pilgrimage, homecoming,
practical
IT for the walker & IT for local communities
philosophical
reflections on walking and space, locality and identity
research
personal agenda and living lab

11. no hard boundaries
research – practice
personal – philosophical
19th century science or Mediaeval?

13. walking Wales
technology
me: “what technology do you use?”
walker: “a map”

14. the best technology!
voice recorder
real buttons!!
use it while moving

15. while walking
active
camera, recorder
passive
GPS, ECG, EDA
when stopped
iPad, blog, flickr,
social media,
uploading data
before/after
web for planning
new contacts on
Twitter, email
reporting, analysis
while walking
other walkers
occasional
friends/family
meeting
when stopped
shop keepers,
B&B proprietors,
chance meetings
talks, visits
before/after
family and friends,
readers,
researchers,
future walkers
social
sphere
technical
sphere

16. data
location
GPX ... batteries ... sporadic signals ....
bio-sensing
ECG (heart), EDA (skin) and accelerometers
audio and images
in the moment
text
after the event
implicit
explicit

18. user experience
connectivity problems
I expected it to be bad ...
but it was worse

19. ... not a recent issue ...

20. not just jerky movies ...
Software Update 2.3Gb
security patch

21. software makes it worse ...
Twitter 140 chars ...
but unusable with poor signal
email slow but works – 1970s technology
Flickr uploader freezes on poor connections
... even in Paris!
✔
✗
✗

23. user experience
principles
time matters

24. timescales
ms secs mins hours days
local interaction +
syncronisation
store & forward
hand-eye
coordination
split-feedback
syntactic/semantic
local feedback
pre-compute
request
response session

25. vocabulary … just words?
bandwidth … how much
delay … how long
jitter … how variable

26. glitches
frequency
length of drop
ms secs mins hours days
ms
secs
mins
hours
days
total
failure
jitter
intermittent
connectivity
glitches

27. principles
store and forward
… in an age of instant
restarting after problems
connectivity-aware applications
also cost, energy, etc. e.g. rich media

29. architecture
& infrastructure
the bits leak out

30. recall …
software makes it worse ...
Twitter 140 chars ...
but unusable with poor signal
Flickr uploader freezes on poor connections
... even in Paris!
N.B. both as in 2013

31. Twitter experience

32. Twitter – why?
code (on start)
– read news-stream
– build UI
– allow tweets

33. https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/statuses/home_timeline

34. https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/statuses/home_timeline

35. 5 pages later …
$ wc one-tweet.json
163 304 4468
https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/statuses/home_timeline

36. Twitter – why?
code (on start)
– read news-stream
– build UI
– allow tweets
could be
– asynchronous load
– lightweight version of API
140 chars = 5-10K in JSON/XML API
50 items (server performance)
50 x 5-10 K = 0.25–0.5 Mbyte
… on 2 bars of GSM!

37. Flickr experience
on desktop:
– select required files
– categorise and tag
on send
– starts to work
– failure
– some files uploaded, but untagged
– no ability to restart

38. Flickr– why?
code (on send)
– upload all images
– tag all images
could be
– build to-do list
– for each item in to-do list
• upload and tag
– on restart: pick up last to-do-list …
on fail exit but save to-do list
on fail exit

39. software architecture
asynchronous interactions
distributed system not thin client
– synchronisation technology – inc. partial sync.
think local connectivity –
– e.g. Qraqrbox (cf. www paper)
think failure / restart
– e.g. to-do list based coding

40. protocols
IP slow start
– resilient to nuclear war
… but not Tiree or Wales coast
DNS failure caching
why glitches???
router overload ?

42. policy
the net
privilege of the rich
or service for all

43. always connected?
mobile signal
absent or weak
broadband ...
not so broad
masts point to sea
not land ...
yachts = money
https://explore.ee.co.uk/coverage-checker

44. infrastructure or privilege?
what is the greatest
British invention?

45. infrastructure or privilege?
19th century – Penny Post
the amazing invention
revolutionised communication
Today – Internet
2013 – 50% of Welsh schools said
poor connectivity hampers education
2017 – 7 out of 20 worst connected areas in UK …
… in Wales
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/pennypos.html

46. nudge, nudge
mobile mast charging
– similar to European roaming
– change cost-benefit for companies
– allow more community masts
ISPs & local communities
– Tiree local traffic goes to London and back!

47. glitches?
no official word for it!
=> not in agreements
not in contracts
not noticed …
… unless you have to live with it

49. in summary
user experience
– on-going issue
– impact for individuals, business and education
policy
– root cause – privilege or public service?
– vocabulary matters
architecture
– good design ameliorates poor infrastructure