So last weeks we have been working in the “background” exploring some JavaScript libraries. As a group we chose to work with a library called Popmotion Pure. It’s an advanced animation library used mainly for animations. A lot of examples on the official website was very technical and was kind of hard to do own creations from the ground up. If I were to choose to use it as tool in the future for quick prototype, I wouldn’t. Mainly because it’s too advanced to use as a “quick” tool and requires the user the familiarize with it in order to know how to manipulate and create with it. Overall the animations from the library seems more directed towards smartphone or tablet design use. Not really suited for high-fidelity prototypes for the web of tomorrow.
To round up the API-phase, I have got a feel for why it was necessary to try out digital tools and it’s important to know that different tools exist and can be used for various digital creations. As someone mentioned earlier in class: “it’s important to know they exist and what their capabilities is”.
A quick mention of a tool that I found very useful is github. It keeps track of versions of the project and by doing that gives a good overview of the progress. Members contribution is also clearly visible, which is a good thing since it can be hard to meet up sometimes and talk about what has been done. It adds value by keeping track of the revisions and so if a mistake has been made it can be reverted but also the ability to share the code and merge seamlessly is a big contributor to why it is a good tool.
For me as a person who is interested in technology but not in steep learning curves, if I were to use JavaScript in the future I would have to be careful with time. As it is an important resource in a project. I therefore have to asses how much time I have available for the project or prototype before I jump the gun on learning a new library and overall have to ask the question: is the library going to enhance the prototype in way that it is actually worth it? Is it actually worth investing the time in a library in order to create a prototype that is possibly high-fidelity (I wouldn’t imagine investing a lot of time in a library only to make a low-fidelity prototype, which can be made so much quicker with other digital tools…) or can you get away with using an other digital tool? I guess it depends on the technical skills of the person but also the type of project, budget, resources and so on. So highly individual from case to case.
Some quick thoughts of the article System Software for Ubiquitous Computing
The article is quite interesting although written in 2002 it discusses and outlines what ubiquitous computing is about. The main attention in the article is directed towards the software and it’s role as a interface between the physical and digital. Some concrete examples are made on what is ubiquitous and what isn’t. Authors make it clear that devices constructed to interact with other devices through a specialized protocol is not deemed to be in the category of ubiquitous or devices of spontaneous interoperation. The leap in developing advanced software for a more seamless operation between different types of devices is what should drive the future in ubiquitous computing, they argue.
The cost of relaying on software to solve issues is that tremendous amount of complexity is added. Not to mention the huge requirement on the technical aspect of the software to be reliable and safe. Since the article was published in 2002 many things have been developed, ubiquitous computing is often heard with/as the term IoT, or Internet of Things. This term seems more easier to understand and comprehend but basically they are the same. Devices can talk with each other and preferably without having to rely on pre-configured protocols limited to specific devices. IoT works seamless and effortless today. Where the driving factor behind implementation is because it can be done easily and why not?
It has come to a point where it’s so cheap to integrate it and so devices not really suited to be an IoT device becomes one and the usefulness or the advantage of being an IoT device can actually diminish. It rather drifts from being useful to being irritating and useless. What kind of possible value could for example a toaster give by being connected, or nowadays as we call it “smart”?
Assessing the functionality and how a toaster work we can come to the conclusion:
- You can’t toast bread remotely via the app because you have got to put some bread in the toaster
- You can’t start toasting the bread and leave. What useful can a person do on ~30 sec.
- Possible value is for people that is absolutely glued to their phone and who always is burning their toast as a result of that? Now they can get a greater control of the toaster?
To summarize I think, transforming existing products into smart connected devices doesn’t always have benefits, Actually it can drift towards being a negative experience, not to mention the added layer of security and reliability that has to be considered.
Micro blogg 