Designing Smart Objects in Everyday Life

Designing Smart Objects in Everyday Life is a compelling study of the intelligences, agencies, and ecologies of “smart objects,” which are responsive, online devices. The editors and authors apply rich insights about our interrelationships with smart objects to fresh ways of designing them. The various essays in this collection exemplify the corollary processes of putting theory into practice and imagination into objects. This collection will be a great asset to any designer or scholar aspiring to push the boundaries of what design can be. * Leslie Atzmon, Professor of Graphic Design and Design History, Eastern Michigan University, USA *The time when we could think of computational technology as something we simply use is over. The question now is how to live, and live well, with this technology as new breeds of smart objects bring artificial agency at an unprecedented scale into everyday life. To prepare design for this challenge we need to understand the dynamics, not just the static features, of this emerging landscape. We need to understand how perspectives and practices come together and form new trajectories. And that is precisely why we need this book. This is not just a snapshot, it’s a collaborative choreography. * Johan Redström, Professor of Design, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden *The time when we could think of computational technology as something we simply use is over. The question now is how to live, and live well, with this technology as new breeds of smart objects bring artificial agency at an unprecedented scale into everyday life. To prepare design for this challenge we need to understand the dynamics, not just the static features, of this emerging landscape. We need to understand how perspectives and practices come together and form new trajectories. And that is precisely why we need this book. This is not just a snapshot, it’s a collaborative choreography. * Johan Redström, Professor of Design, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden *Designing objects that can learn, act and relate to humans and non-humans well is a monumental challenge. This collection provides much-needed starting points for an interaction design research agenda for addressing that challenge through expanding possibilities for thinking, making and critiquing “smart objects” and the ecologies in which they live. A sense of curiosity and care infuses the book, sparking imagination but also cultivating sensibilities for the messy implications and non-neutral consequences of things we might design and live with. It is important reading for anyone wanting to develop a wise approach to the design of smart objects. * Heather Wiltse, Associate Professor, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden *This book took me on a roller-coaster ride through different perspectives, ideas, approaches, theory and examples. Starting from a “more than human” perspective, the book introduces, deepens, alienates, critiques, and speculates on the future of the design space of smart objects in everyday life. In doing so, it offers a compelling research agenda for connected and smart IoT. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and highly recommend it. * Joep Frens, Designer and Researcher in the Future Everyday Group, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands *

Marco C. Rozendaal is Associate Professor of Interaction Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.

Betti Marenko is Reader in Design and Techno-Digital Futures at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK.

William Odom is Assistant Professor in Design at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, Canada.