This thesis focuses on the technological trends in smart products, and analyzes their conformity to the user expectations. The advances in computation technologies have totally revolutionized the product concept, and with the integration of microchips, software and sensors into the classical everyday objects, smart products, able to sense the context, reason about the sensed data and act according to the situation, have emerged. This new way of computing basing on the ubiquitous and calm computing visions, has distributed the digital information into the surrounding environment, and once freed from the limited resources provided by the classical desktop based computing, attempted to enhance user product communication and collaboration in everyday environments. Via their sensing - decision making - acting process and advanced interaction capabilities, smart products have gained the ability to better interpret user needs and intuitively communicate with users through simplified interfaces involving the majority of the senses without even disturbing or overburdening their users. The study first, throughout a literature review, examines these improvements in computation technologies and determines the trends related to smart products. An empirical research is then conducted to find out to what extend user expectations from smart products overlap with the ongoing researches in this area. The findings including users&rsquo / conception about smartness and expectations from different types of smart products are analyzed regarding to the technological trends to deduce the coherence between literature&rsquo / s orientation and user preferences. The study considered the technological trends as a database and takes the user expectations as the design motivation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12612450/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| Creators | Atacan Pamir, Naz |
| Contributors | Erbug, Cigdem |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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