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AGENTIVE TECHNOLOGY
An Evolving Contemporary Need
OBJECTIVE
Studying assistive and agentive technology as system and understanding evolving needs of system for different ages, need for assistive & agentive technology not just for disabled people but also for normal people. Diving deep into agent based technology that is agentive technology. Further exploring new novel areas where these technologies could play a vital role.
PROPOSED SOLUTION
REVIVING SMART ANALOG
Technology has been evolving at a much faster pace but the large user group is yet to be on boarded into the world of smart technology. Reasons being very high learning curve,Very costly and complex to use. So designing analog version of smart devices would be a great solution since they can be manufactured at very low cost hence making it affordable for all, they have a very low learning curve hence making it easy to use.
The product I propose is a nudging device which gives haptic triggers at a set level by user, these triggers could be used to drive behavior changes towards well-being, productivity and getting rid of bad habits, much more.
Assistive technology augments capabilities and helps user perform a task.
scope of Assistive technology is to deliver a product and a service to support people with different capabilities and help to improve their overall life conditions.
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY
What makes them really,
really cool
What makes them really,
really cool
What makes them really,
really cool
AGENTIVE TECHNOLOGY
Agentive technology In the simplest definition, an agent is a piece of narrow artificial intelligence that acts on behalf of its user.
Technology not only provides a way for us to visualize an abundance of information, and filter through that information in our quest to understand it. It can help us complete simple, informational, and even physical tasks that are time consuming. One way of dealing with a complex system in the future will be to offload work to an Agentive Technology.
Agentive Technologies are a form of artificial intelligence—a subset known as “Narrow A.I.” These technologies assist people by performing simple, specific tasks. For example, WAZE will keep friends notified when traffic delays our arrival time. E Bay lets us set up Watch Lists to find and bid on things that match our search terms. Even spam filters in Gmail are helping us by filtering out information we don’t need, before we even know there’s a problem.
“They Move Us from Moments to Interests”
The constant growth of Assistive Technology development was found predominantly in navigation systems (30 papers) such as a wearable navigation device [21], marker detection using machine learning techniques [22], and mobility aid systems (11 papers) such as a smart walker [23]. Other types of developed technologies that are worth mentioning are visual aid, hearing aid and audio, computer, and mobile app systems to improve accessibility.
EXISTING PRODUCTS
Narrative Clip
Google’s driverless cars
Roomba
ShotSpotter
and more...
The current state of agentive technology is like a five year old child, it needs to be designed in such a way that human can intervene and provide assistance to the technology so that it can learn, adapt and brings the best out of it.
TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT
Firstly we have to stop seeing it as a collection of tools or gadgets and instead see it as an evolutionary flow around human problems, whose parts ultimately integrate to become a new category of thing.
WOOD FIRE
“So what tools have we used to help us with the warm-blooded problem of temperature regulation?”
CORNELI'S INCUBATOR
ADVANTAGES IT BROUGHT
Electricity consumption has a direct effect on the carbon footprint as electricity generation requires the burning of non renewable resources and leads to the carbon footprint.
Agentive technology has a huge social impact, for instance in the above case of thermostat it directly addresses the united nation’s sustainable development goal: Responsible consumption and production by creating an impact on most efficient way of energy conservation and consumption. Hence The usage of smart thermostats is also backed up by governments of the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, etc.
HONEYWELL’S MANUAL
THERMOSTAT
GOOGLE NEST
Agentive technology is evolving all the industries, hence one could say the future is going to be led by agentive technology
CURRENT RESEARCHES AND INNOVATION ARE HAPPENING IN CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES
SUB SYSTEM
WEARABLE TECHNOLOGIES
Wearable technology, also known as "wearables," is a category of electronic devices that can be worn as accessories, embedded in clothing, implanted in the user's body, or even tattooed on the skin. The devices are hands-free gadgets with practical uses, powered by microprocessors and enhanced with the ability to send and receive data via the Internet.
The rapid adoption of such devices has placed wearable technology at the forefront of the Internet of things (IoT).
The real life-altering applications in wearable technology, however, can be found in medical devices.
In Louisville, Kentucky, wearable devices made by AIR Louisville are being used to monitor local air quality, measure pollutants, and identify hotspots for residents with respiratory problems.
Cyrcadia Health has developed Cyrcadia Breast Monitor, an intelligent patch that can detect early signs of breast cancer and transmit the information to a lab for analysis.
Wearable medical alert monitors are extending greater mobility and independence to the elderly and impaired.
Smart tattoos that contain flexible electronic sensors are being developed to monitor heart and brain activity, sleep disorders, and muscle function. While these are temporary, even inks are being explored!
DATA ANALYSIS
Focus on health and health-related products helps drive wearable electronics sales.
Wearable electronics sees 6% retail volume growth to reach 5.3 million units in 2021.
Activity watch (digital) is the fastest-growing category in 2021, with a retail volume sales increase of 9%.
Xiaomi Technology India retains the lead with a volume share of 31% in 2021.
Wearable electronics to record a 12% volume CAGR over the forecast period to reach 9.3 million units in 2026
The rate of product conversion into waste is higher than the recycling rate. The reason why products are ending into landfills at a quicker pace is because the products are complex and the entire experience is not designed in such a way that the user is motivated to use the product continuously without getting bored of it.
Hence we can also draw a inference that the rate at which user experience is developed no equivalent to the rate at which the products are being developed. There is no on boarding process in smart technologies.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR
For a fully robust agentive technology implementation, we also require a better understanding of the yet-to-emerge “natural” or intuitive interaction paradigms.
Smaller screen display
Designers need to work within constraints of smaller screen sizes when displaying information. Scalable interfaces are also explored as applications extend to desktops, PDAs, and even phone interfaces.
Location-based and context-sensitive data
Many agentive technology applications “push” information based on the location of users and display information implicitly to users on a mobile device.
Cultural differences
Users are diverse and they can come from all over the world. We need to have in place some degree of standardization to prevent diverse cultural conflicts.
Privacy
With widespread use of wireless broadband, we have to be vigilant in protecting our personal information and our personal network access.
Security
Tradeoffs between usability and security. In the agentive technology environment, we have many public computers serving individual computers. For context awareness systems, users’ details and profiles need to be captured. New design challenges involve understanding security tradeoffs of having users logging into the public computers as opposed to not having authentication where users enjoy access into these various systems.
PROPOSED FRAMEWORK OF DESIGN
solutions
FOR USERS
Scalability/Adoptability :
The clarity, relevance and uniqueness of the value proposition to consumers is essential for adoption. There are many similar choice in the market and consumers are generally not familiar with this category of devices and services, making selection a potentially stressful experience.
Design/Aesthetics :
The majority of wearable products today are worn in a manner in which they are visible. The aesthetics of a product are therefore critical. Companies that embrace design elegance over breadth of features are more likely to find users wearing their products for a longer period of time.
Out-of-Box/Setup Experience :
The quality of the initial experience with a product or service is critical. Companies starting from an idealized out-of-box experience will likely achieve a far more pleasant and lasting experience than those that don’t.
Fit/Comfort/Form Factor :
The fit and overall comfort of a device are critical for adoption and sustained utilization. This extends well beyond the comfort of simply wearing the device. Other common activities need to be considered. for example, wrist-worn wearable with thicker bands can quickly become irritating in a number of different activities like typing on a laptop.
Quality/Robustness :
Building a reliable wearable device is hard. A device that is designed to be worn on the wrist throughout all of life’s activities experience a high degree of wear and tear.
User Experience :
The user experience must be immediately intuitive, familiar and seamless which transcend the device, the mobile app, web-service and overall support.
API/Integratability :
Many devices and services support APIs such that data can be accessed by other services to create new types of benefits for the users. As more services become available that can leverage this data, the overall experience improves.
FOR DESIGNERS
Conveying Capability :
New and potential users need to understand what a given agent can do.Marketing, advertising, and product placement are ways you can convey capability in mass media. A well-crafted name and tagline can make its purpose easy to understand, recall, and convey.
Conveying Limitations :
A key thing to convey is what it can’t do, so users don’t approach it with expectations that are too high and subsequently feel let down. Marketing, brand, and industrial design will be your user’s first impressions, and they serve as major clues.
Getting Goals, Preferences, and Permissions :
Agents will have the ultimate goal of their use predefined. Spotify, for instance, is for listening to music and not much else.
Smart Defaults :
To encourage initial adoption, the amount of setup for any agent should be kept to a minimum. Providing smart defaults is a good way to have an agent work well enough, even if the user declines to provide specifics. While agents should be designed to run with smart defaults, setting up an agent’s subgoals and preferences of how the agent is to do its work is important. This can be handled implicitly or explicitly.
Implicitly :
Another way to minimize the amount of setup data is to gather what you need implicitly. People leave more and more digital trails as they move through the world, and those trails can provide a lot of data if you can parse it. Social media is one obvious category. Users who grant access to their Facebook accounts are sharing that information and the interests they’ve indicated in their profiles. Designers should be careful to only ask permission if it’s absolutely necessary, as it can come across as invasive. When you do it, explain why you’re asking by explaining the benefits.
SPECULATIVES
Scenario 1: Workout
Majnu has to complete 3k steps a day as part of his fitness regime and this is a habit he wants to stick to desperately, but today after a hectic work schedule he was able to manage 2k steps. At this point AT assesses and intervenes since it has his body metrics and is aware that majnu had a tiring day, It suggest majnu that we can call it a day and could initiate plan B as planned earlier thus avoiding demotivation and gradually progressing towards the goal.
It can monitor his daily schedule and food consumption pattern, then figure out an apt time to workout on daily basis. thus the feeling of being extremely busy and having no time to workout could be avoided and give hope of building a healthy habit.
Scenario 2: Rain
Majnu is busy working on his project compromising his personal time. It has started raining outside which majnu is not aware of and majnu likes rain a lot. The weather detection tech has sent the information and through connected network, the door mic relays the live audio of rain through speaker and nudges majnu through visual message about the rain and asks him to shift his workspace nearby window or just spend some time over there and enjoy rain.
It can follow majnu's eating pattern during rain and order them (like chai & pakoda) or prepare recipe whenever it's more likely to rain.
By detection the emotional state of a person through body metrics and social media. the tech could intimate people with whom the user is very close to and expects emotional support. could also possibly order food or screen some visuals which would help the user get normal.
Scenario 3: Education
Progressive educational support system. A child's educational performances, what he likes to read,do and smart clothing could map his physical activity and performances. using all this data a pattern could be formed and projection could be made of the areas/sectors where the child has a higher rate of excelling
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