Digital Decor: Augmented Everyday Things

Digital Decor is furniture, appliances, and other small objects commonly found in homes and offices that have been augmented with computational power to extend usefulness. As such, Digital Decor is a physical manifestation of the ubiquitous, pervasive, and invisible computer in which the familiar, everyday object is imbued with additional capabilities through a single, simple application. Thus far we have investigated two possible functionalities for Digital Decor: everyday objects that keep track of their own contents (this can be called “smart storage”), and everyday objects that support informal, lightweight communication. For this paper we developed four prototypes: Timestamp Drawers and Strata Drawer are Digital Decor prototypes augmented to keep track of their contents while Peek-A-Drawer and Meeting Pot are prototypes augmented to support communication.