Having developed a shared understanding of what the internet of things is (or might be), now we’re going to explore and discover the kinds of ‘internet appliances’ available today. As part of this exercise you’re going to search for innovative connected products, and report back on what you find. Together, we’ll develop a large database of connected products to inspire our work in this course.
The goal is to broaden your understanding of the field and deepen your knowledge of prior work that’s relevant to this project and to the course. You’ll be expected to select a couple of works and report on your findings with a critical perspective.
By the end of this exercise, students will:
have identified and rigorously review two precedent projects that relate to the course
helped co-create a set of exemplars to draw on as part of their own explorations;
have increased their ability to describe the domain of connected products.
Report on two ‘internet appliances’ (or Internet of Things devices) you haven’t seen before, are relevant to the course and you find particularly interesting.
The emphasis here is on discovery. Explore news sites, blogs, aggregator, as well as conferences, journals and scientific papers to find exciting examples of the Internet of Things vision. This could equally be a historical example which informed the kinds of products and scenarios we encounter today, a breakthrough product which has had impact or influence, a current and state-of-the-art consumer device, a cutting edge research prototype, or a speculative proposal for a future device. There’s also no constraints on the sources or places you can look but some starting points are listed below.
Due: Tuesday, 19th January 2016, 8.30am (before class)
Create a Post in the #examples channel on slack
In the post, embed a video and/or images of the project, and write a short critical reflection on the project (about 200 words) in which you:
Briefly describe the project (a couple of sentences) and who made it.
Describe why you selected the project (what is interesting, inspirational, innovative, etc. about it)
Describe why you believe it’s an important or innovative example of an IoT device
Critique the project - what are its shortcomings; how could it be made better, what did they get right and what didn’t they get right and why, etc.
Draw relationships to other work: What inspired or informed it? How does it compare to other work? Why is it influential and what has it influenced?
Note: Create a separate post for each example,
(by no means an exhaustive list!)
Online Aggregators and new Sites
Conferences and Research
Labs and Agencies