Research & Design Media & Syndication Humans V
Distributed Innovation  

Ambient Personality Design

One of the primary areas of research within The Viroid Group has been the emerging field of Ambient Personality Design.

» Ambient Personality Design is the design of the end interface, implemented within human communication mediums, and utilizing human rhetorical protocols, between the complex datastreams of embedded technology objects and the human experience of interactive data points of view.

» We currently map the field thusly: Ambient Intelligence -> Sensor networks -> Data POV -> Social Network of Things -> Human Communication Protocols -> Ambient Personality Design.

» As sensor data becomes increasingly complex, the range of requisite responses coming through such HCP’s (Human Communication Protocols) can also become overwhelmingly complex for simple human interactions.

» To reduce the complexity of both the data and the interaction within such a network as the Internet of Things, The Viroid Group has increasingly attempted to quantify the design of these interactions as personalities: abstracted interactions.

» Ambient Personality Design is NOT: the design of virtual people, faces, or the nightmare of Clippys, but rather small HCI scripts which utilize HCP, and are designed to simplify and highlight interactions against a backdrop of unmanageable complexity.

» As the need to manage complex interactions within the Internet of Things grows, Social Networks for Things will become increasingly complex. To counter and relate to the complexity, Ambient Personality social interactions will have to be defined.

» Social Networks of Things are not to be confused with people’s use of things explicitly, but rather, how they mirror and map onto our people-based models of social networks, and how ambient personalities relate to them.