Increasingly, we are witnessing the convergence of our physical and digital worlds. Information is now the material in which we mold and construct the world around us. The products of today and tomorrow are no longer one dimensional in their purpose and function; they carry computational power, which gives them the ability to provide us with intelligence and services that extend well beyond a products core functionality. In a ubiquitous computing world, there are no limits to the functional capabilities of even the most basic object. Intelligence can and will be designed into every aspect of our environment. Every product we purchase can be enhanced by a service offering, and every service offering can be extended into our surrounding environment. This “Internet of Things” will require that we architect and design information systems in a “multi-channel, cross-media perspective” that aggregates information at the point of use, so that user experiences are personal, social, contextually relevant, and non-intrusive.

The vast amounts of metadata that will come from an “Internet of Things” will provide us with many opportunities, as well as challenges. Among these challenges, is representing this information in a relevant and understandable fashion. By using Augmented Reality as an interface for the Internet of Things we have an immediate and visual medium to display a great deal of data clearly and quickly. It is the ideal channel for us to not only visualize this information, but see it in context, so that we don’t get overwhelmed with miscellaneous data. Augmented Realities effective use of this information, however, requires that it remains scalable and flexible across media and channels. My research aims to advance our understanding of how Information Architecture will evolve in a ubiquitous computing era so as to ensure that service and interaction designs can scale to create ideal end-user experiences.

This project aims to analyze what pervasive Information Architecture design means from an enterprise perspective. In a ubiquitous computing world as described above, companies are actively involved in their customer’s lives well beyond the purchase of their product. There is an ongoing relationship with the customer that is tied to the information services the company may be providing the customer with directly, indirectly (by passing that information on to other systems and/or objects), or both. Therefore, as “objects of intelligence” come online, digital services and their underlying data will have to cope with increasing complexity, in 3 manners:
1.) One Device will need to support Multiple Services
2.) Multiple Devices will need to support One Service
3.) Services will need to be Interoperable

These factors will lead to a paradigm shift in the way companies manage their enterprise data, what information they regard as valuable, and how they will monetize this data in a social world where the Internet of Things intersects with Augmented Reality. We will analyze this from the perspective of what it takes for a company to manage its customer relationships and partners in this new era. Through a hard look at new trends in the enterprise space, such as Enterprise 2.0 and “the Social Enterprise”, as well as emerging management philosophies that are becoming main-stream, like Design Thinking and Keio’s Design Technology Management Policy (DTMP) framework, we hope to define a new methodology for enterprise resource and relationship management. This knowledge will help us equip businesses with the tools to make this Data understandable, useful and private in a world where customer relationships could last a life-time.

At its core this project intends to design and develop a new Enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System for our Ubiquitous Computing Future. This system will look at the requirements for managing customer relationships in a context where businesses are connected directly to consumers in real-time. We will attempt to design a system that delivers contextually relevant information to a user’s environment (either directly or indirectly) based on a variety of factors surrounding an individual’s location in time and space, and an object’s information shadow. The system will employ the Internet along with mobile computing and communication technologies to define user-experience standards that will prevent it from being intrusive, protect individual privacy, and mitigate abuse of power.

The deliverables for this project include:
• Defining governance and policy issues for consumer privacy and information security.
• Design of a metadata delivery interface that is easy to use and encourages industry adoption,
• Defining a set of standard data-integration techniques,
• Development of metadata matching techniques
• Developing a set of operating rules for the management of customers and lead/opportunity identification
• Development of a functional CRM system for a ubiquitous computing world.

This internet of things + augmented reality future will dramatically alter the economic and operational models of many businesses. For example, a large manufacture may find that it is more profitable for them to manage data services for a larger number of smaller manufactures that can build custom products for customers. An insurance company may decide to subsidize refrigerators for its customers, because it can realize higher-profit margins by tailoring premiums according to nutritional data it collects on its customers from the devices. These examples represent a paradigm shift in the economic models of several industries, if not our economy as a whole. My goal is to lay the ground-work, so that we have both the tools and the knowledge to help guide and transition companies to a whole new way of doing business; one that is focused on building quality life-long relationships with end users.