Ambiguous computing

Ambiguous computing is sub-branch of human-computer interaction (HCI) concerned with how ambiguity can be used as a resource for creating more engaging computer systems. By leveraging the fact "ambiguous situations require people to participate in making meaning" [ [http://www.equator.ac.uk/var/uploads/2002-gaver-0.pdf Gaver, W., Beaver, J., Benford, S. Ambiguity as a Resource for Design. In Proc. of CHI’03, Ft. Lauderdale, USA, 2003.] ] designers can thus relinquish control to the users in interpreting the system. The important pioneers in this field are William Gaver and Phoebe Sengers.

Ambiguity in design originated in cultural probes as a method for user research [ [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=291235 Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne, Elena Pacenti. Design: Cultural probes, interactions, v.6 n.1, p.21-29, Jan./Feb. 1999] ] [ [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/sengers/teaching/sts634/Papers/probes.pdf K. Boehner, J. Vertesi, P. Sengers, and P. Dourish, "How hci interprets the probes," in CHI '07: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 2007.] ] . However, it was later adopted in actual design prototypes and artifacts [ [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~lleahu/DISBIO.pdf Leahu, Lucian, Steve Schwenk, and Phoebe Sengers. "Subjective objectivity: negotiating emotional meaning." DIS '08: Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems. New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2008] ] [Maria Håkansson and Lalya Gaye. Bringing Context to the Foreground: Designing for Creative Engagement in a Novel Still Camera Application, DIS 2008, Cape Town, South Africa, 2008. ] .

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