Wise objects for calm technology

In this position paper we identify the design of “wise systems” as an open research problem addressing new technology-based systems. Increasing complexity and sophistication make those systems hard to understand and to master. Human users are very often involved in learning processes that capture all their attention while being of little interest for them. To alleviate human interaction with such systems, as the foundation of our current research, we propose the concept of “wise object” as the building block. Software-based systems would then be able to autonomously learn on themselves and on the way humans use them. Humans would in turn be prompted only when necessary by the system.