Social interactions in Ambient Intelligent environments

This thesis is focussing on research into Ambient Intelligence. More specific, the thesis will focus on infrastructures, methodology and applications deployed in Ambient Intelligence research. By presenting work on those three aspects the thesis contributes to the scientific research field of Ambient Intelligence research. It should be emphasized that this does not imply that all Ambient Inteligence related research should be done within the presented infrastructures and with the presented methodology. The applications of Ambient Intelligence presented in this thesis investigate the possible role of technology to support people in maintaining social connectedness. More specific, a series of empirical studies is reported that explore the potential for Ambient Intelligent environments to support and facilitate social affiliation through technology. By positioning the human need in the center of technology development, Ambient Intelligence (described in chapter 2) is an attractive approach to application development for social affiliation. The studies reported in this thesis have in large part been conducted in the ExperienceLabs at Philips Research. These test facilities (described in chapter 4) are specifically suitable for experience research (described and illustrated with a case study in chapter 3) that requires controlled yet realistic testing environments. In a first series of experiments with awareness systems to mediate presence through silhouette representations of remote activities is investigated (see chapter 5) and mediating availability through presence information (see chapter 6). The results of these studies show that providing simple presence information can create strong feelings of social connectedness while supporting the function of availability judgements (i.e. using the presence information to estimate the availability of the remote person to engage into a conversation). Taking Ambient Intelligence (AmI) to the next level, the role of social intelligence (see the extended AmI model in chapter 2) is investigated in a controlled laboratory study and discussed in chapter 7. From this study it is learned that equipping technical systems with a level of social intelligence results in enriched and human-like interactions with the system. The scientific contribution of this thesis is in: ? A Methodological Framework for Ambient Intelligent research ? The empirical validation of Experience and Application Research Centers as scientific instruments ? Demonstration of the affective benefits of Awareness Systems ? Illustration of how social intelligence can be manifested in a Home Dialogue System ? The Assessment of Social Intelligence in a Home Dialogue System ? Illustrated the spillover effects of Social Intelligence