The paper discusses a workshop that will tackle intimate technology through the designers lenses. There are three areas discussed in tech literature concerning the topic.
1. intimacy as cognitive and emotional closeness with technology, where the technology (typically unidirectionally) may be aware of, and responsive to, our intentions, actions and feelings. Here our technologies know us intimately; we may or may not know them intimately. 2. intimacy as physical closeness with technology, both on the body and/or within the body. 3. intimacy through technology: technology that can express of our intentions, actions and feelings toward others.
Within this context, open source could be seen as an approach to intimacy by opening up the possibility for us to know and trust the tech. Cognitive and emotional closeness becomes bi-directionally.
[…] intimate computing implies a sense of detail; it is about supporting a diversity of people, bodies, desires, ecologies and niches.
Current ubiquitous computing paradigms are still within a frame of mass-production and a one-solution serving-all mindset. Customization is practically a hoax.
To go forward the workshop perceives four strategies.
(1) deriving understandings of people’s nuanced, day-to-day practices; (2) elaborating cultural sensitivities; (3) revisioning notions of mediated intimacy, through explorations of play and playfulness; and (4) exploring new concepts and methods for design.
I believe that the third approach, play, is linked to Sung’s concept of ambiguity (see [@sungMyRoombaRambo2007]) and Marenko’s uncertainty (see [@marenkoAnimisticDesignHow2016]).