The Influence of Ubiquity on Screen-Based Interfaces

This paper brings together the disciplines of media studies and software systems engineering and focuses on the challenge of finding methodologies to measure and test certain effects of ubiquitous computing. We draw on two examples: an interactive screen-based art installation and an interface for ubiquitous videogaming. We find that the second example demonstrates that the identification of a common framework for ubiquity enables one to adopt a set of subjective measurements that can then be aggregated into a qualitative appraisal of some aspects of screen ubiquity. Ultimately, however, we postulate that we need to merge the measurement system built on the engineering development principles illustrated in our second example with a humanistic and artistic approach, albeit analytical.