ABSTRACT
Based on advancements in information technology in recent years, new possibilities have emerged to better connect the occupants with environmental systems of buildings. Particularly in large and technologically sophisticated buildings, multi-faceted interactions between building occupants and the multitude of environmental control devices and systems need to be tightly integrated in order to assure effective building operation and performance. As to the role of user interfaces in the context of intelligent built environments, there are a number of precedents. For example, the ubiquitous communicator – the user interface of PAPI intelligent house in Japan – is developed as a communication device that enables the occupants to communicate with people, physical objects, and places (Sakamura 2005). More recent works on the integration of user interfaces into intelligent environments include Swiss house project in Harvard University (Huang & Waldvogel 2004), and Interactive space project by SONY (Rekimoto 2007).
