Abstract

A great deal of work has been focused on reducing wired and other physical connects between digital mobile devices. At the lead of this movement is design and designed experiences. Perhaps the challenge in creating these unseen interactions is not one of technical capability, but one of true need. Even if it can be physically executed, should design always strive towards the execution of these unseen experiences? Current and future scenarios in ubiquitous computing paint a picture of an increasingly wireless-saturated world, in which everyday objects become enabled computational devices that are seamlessly and not so seamlessly embedded into our future environments. Perhaps design has the opportunity to capitalize on users’ implicit understanding of physical relationships and utilize these understandings in creating meaningful interactions, thus striving for a better combination of software and hardware. This is not simply a question of visual perception or semantics, but that of behavior, the behavior of products. This paper will examine how linguistics can play a role in the decoding and encoding of relationships (paired connections) between wireless mobile devices and what this could mean for the future of designed interactions. Special attention has been directed toward ad hoc networks and various pairing protocols.