Egocentric interaction as a tool for designing ambient ecologies – The case of the easy ADL ecology

Ambient intelligence is a human-centered vision characterized by the seamless integration of information, communication, sensing and actuation, and interface technologies for supporting human agents with their everyday activities. There are many challenges to address including the need for an interaction paradigm that encompasses the multiple dimensions of a human agent and their environment. This work describes a human-centered interaction paradigm referred to as the egocentric interaction paradigm that considers a human agents body and mind as a centre of reference to which all interaction modelling is anchored. The egocentric interaction paradigm is described by a set of design principles and models including the situative space model that is intended for the ambient ecology designers and developers. Ambient ecology could be considered as a metaphor for the infrastructure through which ambient intelligence could be realised. This work describes such an ambient ecological system comprising of a set of smart everyday objects, a personal activity-centric middleware, a set of mock-up ubiquitous computing applications and a human agent within a living laboratory home environment with an intention of exploring the egocentric interaction paradigm. 20 subjects took part in a quantitative and agent experience study, with the results showing promise to continue further research in the direction of exploring the egocentric interaction paradigm.