“Café Tools: Contents that Connect People” by Ueki and Inakage

Our activities are affected by our surrounding environment any time. Several projects of architecture and product design have been developed and examined these designs of environmental effects that enhance human’s activities in the aspects of structural or material approach. But our approach is to expand them from system aspects with ubiquitous technology. We thought that by designing the dynamic relations between people and their surroundings with sensing and feedback systems of environment, we can naturally and seamlessly enlarge the sensitivity of people and support their activities.
Our challenge is to prepare an integrated supportive environment not by changing the environment itself, but by composing contents as demands of activities. In this paper, we describe about Café Tools. We designed them for usual communication in a café where as a very important public communication space.