Lalya Gaye • Outside of Dånk! • Teaching

Assisting a Hands-on Smart-Its Workshop (IT-University in Göteborg, 2004)

Posted by Lalya on 1 October 2007⋅ Comment⋅ Share⋅  Email ⋅  Print
Tags: Electronics, Göteborg, Prototyping, Ubicomp, Workshops

In 2004, I assisted Dr. Martin Strohbach from Lancaster University (UK) during a hands-on Smart-Its workshop at the Intelligent Products course of the Intelligent Systems Design programme, at IT-University in Göteborg. (Head of the course: Dr. Lars Erik Holmquist)

The Intelligent Products course focuses on the interplay between the virtual and physical environments, and how the inclusion of computational abilities in our surroundings changes our everyday life. It is meant to give computer science students a sense of the type of consumer products that can be developed with interactive and ubiquitous computing technologies.

Martin Strohbach had been invited as a guest teacher and his section of the course consisted of a combination of lectures and design activities that were meant to teach the students how to set requirements for the design and implementation of ubiquitous computing environment. The lectures detailed a method for designing applications with the Smart-Its platform (rule-based application development with smart artefacts). In the design activities part, students made use of physical props in order to get an embodied understanding of the rule-based method.

My role as assistant was to help Martin with the logistics of the activities, answer to the students’ questions and document the activities for further discussions and presentations.

On-line picture documentation here.