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Designing for high expectations: balancing ambiguity and thorough specification in the design of a wayfinding tool for firefighters

Published: 16 August 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Ambiguity has been identified as a useful tool for designing ubicomp systems. In the design of safety critical systems, however, the expectations for a system are particularly high, and goals of the technology are rigidly defined. In this context is not clear if open ended systems can still be used as a tool for design. In this paper we present a detailed account of the design process of an indoor wayfinding support tool for firefighters, in which ambiguity played a central role in driving the construction of the system. Based on an ongoing work covering more than a year of close collaboration with a heterogeneous team of project partners, we present some implications of using ambiguity for designing ubiquitous computing solutions in a domain that traditionally requires more formal specifications for the construction of technology.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Exploring the Design Space of Optical See-through AR Head-Mounted Displays to Support First Responders in the FieldProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642195(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2018)Is the Frontier Shifting into the Right Direction? A Qualitative Analysis of Acceptance Factors for Novel Firefighter Information TechnologiesInformation Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-017-9785-820:4(669-692)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
  • (2013)A Concept for Support of Firefighter Frontline CommunicationFuture Internet10.3390/fi50201135:2(113-127)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2013
  • Show More Cited By

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  1. Designing for high expectations: balancing ambiguity and thorough specification in the design of a wayfinding tool for firefighters

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    DIS '10: Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems
    August 2010
    457 pages
    ISBN:9781450301039
    DOI:10.1145/1858171
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 16 August 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. context awareness
    2. firefighting
    3. indoor navigation
    4. interaction design
    5. ubiquitous computing
    6. wayfinding

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 1,158 of 4,684 submissions, 25%

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    View all
    • (2024)Exploring the Design Space of Optical See-through AR Head-Mounted Displays to Support First Responders in the FieldProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642195(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2018)Is the Frontier Shifting into the Right Direction? A Qualitative Analysis of Acceptance Factors for Novel Firefighter Information TechnologiesInformation Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-017-9785-820:4(669-692)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
    • (2013)A Concept for Support of Firefighter Frontline CommunicationFuture Internet10.3390/fi50201135:2(113-127)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2013
    • (2012)LandmarkePersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-011-0462-516:8(1025-1038)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2012
    • (2011)Engaging with practicesProceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work10.1145/1958824.1958902(505-512)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2011
    • (2011)Mixed-Media-Interaktion in der kooperativen WissenschaftspraxisInformatik-Spektrum10.1007/s00287-011-0524-034:2(165-177)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2011

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