Flows and interaction

Reading about support for mobile social interaction or social icebreakers I was inspired to this idea of a projector based system which would project information in front of you. The user would be presented with three or more possible flows or directions to moving each of which would expose different types of information to the user.   if the user followed a particular branch that Branch might then split up again into more detailed information.
The idea would be that if two users were exhibiting interest in the same kind of subject than they might be directed to collide with each other and then over the subject might discover they have some interest in common.

File this under experiments to do when I had a near infinite number of projectors on hand

Nice review of the lab

In case you ever wonder about the space the lab is in.

"One of the main purposes of the building, of which Jennie Lee would have been proud, is to encourage research into the interaction of people and technology as well as the development of approaches to teaching and learning about the deployment of those technologies....

Perhaps the coolest part of the building is the Pervasive Interaction Lab, headed by Professor Yvonne Rogers. Among the research themes investigated by the lab are technology-enhanced learning, how people interact with virtual environments and multimedia and ubiquitous computing. This involves moving away from desktop computers to an environment where smart devices are all around us and effectively invisible to the user."

Iphone idears Digital jitney

Having had the iphone for a few days now I have had a few more idears about what you could do with it.
The gps is they good and I realised that you could implement a great eco transport tool. To make it work you would need two iPhone apps and a web server.

App 1.

If you want to go from a to b you press the summon button on your specially down loaded iPhone app.
Your origin and destination are compared to a list of shared Taxis running in the city.
If some part of your route matches a near by taxi it is redirected to you. If not fresh one is dispatched.
Your phone gets a Ok response a time a price and expected journey time.
You enter your credit details on the iPhone app and effectively pay over the web.
The journey time is in a range the taxi your getting may or may not change route according to who calls it.
The taxi arrives - its larger than normal and can take 4-6 people.
You share the taxi for part of the route which means you share the cost.
The taxi driver has a Iphone/Tomtom app which is dynamically updated from the central server. It gives directions which it the driver uses to wave through the city to the next pickup./drop off (these can change dynamically).
Taxi drops you off at near your destination.

So what do you get for this.
1. You get taxi like service (origin/destination travel)
2. The taxi may take longer than a pure taxi. - It might stop for others.
3. You get 1/N (where N is the number of passengers ) cost.
So if you imagine that you manage to share the taxi with 4 other people you get 1/4 cost. So an £8 ride becomes a £2 ride - not bad.

The city gets something between a taxi service and a bus service. The taxi doesn't move until someone wants to go some where so you avoid empty bus syndrome. The taxi is fuller than a taxi or car so you get more efficent movement with out sacrificing safety or door to door movement.

Results from the first Pilot study

1. flat power supply so can close box. 
   
2. longer vibration sensor cabel.
3. add temp./light sensor ( fans come on when its hot) 
4. wireless mouse/keyboard good. 
5. enable ethernet point and run everything remotely. 

Generally went quite well but I'm not sure about the vibration  (stair case) data. Need to enegage this fully on Monday.  

We now have about 2 hours worth of data. 

something edgy, something collaborative, something borrowed, something blue

From the last shareIt meeting. We wanted something
1. Edgy
2. Easy and quick to do. ( no new expensive hardware)
3. Something we can do more collaborative/shareable (real time collaborate) research with.
4. Something playful but not an art work.
5. Fairly simple reliable.

here is my next idea

On the way down the the ShareIt meeting I was chatting about thinking about another kind of floor saver application. When we entered the building I realised what I wanted.

As you enter many buildings you see bits of paper stuck up with 'meeting here this way'

I wanted to make a floor stickies (RM's rather brilliant name).

As you enter the building and through out the building you see rectangles projected on the floor like sticky notes. As you walk on them the pages move and reorder to keep out of the way ( fun with crowds) or stick to you if you don't move for a bit. Some playful interaction between two people as the notes move to avoid both pedestrians. Messages can be either simple text or and image (downloaded).

To avoid annoyance messages can only live for 1-7 days. So the floor is never casually out of date(unlike paper ones you have to go and take down).

These are messages ( some including a direction arrow) that anyone in the local department intranet can add via web page.

Edgey factor.
Posts are anonymous, for example if you took pictures of peoples desks you could put them on floor stickies until controversy or boredom takes over.

Modes of collaboration: from inhabitants to visitors ( Dave - Third floor for mike ),
for inhabitants (Paul gone to Cafe see you later).
for one to many inhabitants ( meeting of OU visions group 2:30 all invited).

Pages show a walked on count ?(soft implementation of gates).

Shareable tech - capturing pages or moving/arranging.

tacky research question - is a floor sticky more noticed than a bit of A4 stuck up some where. How event aware are people?

real research question is about looking at how people adopt/ma-adopt(misuse) technology. Do a survey of what people might use a technology for in the abstract then try again a few months later. Also a probe into open space collaborative technologies ( the research question arises from the result ).

Any thoughts ?

WINNER 4G

I'm at a conferance at the moment (CNSR) quite intreasting. I am currently in a Keynote about a system called WINNER a 4G system. The talk is about adaptive shareing the frequency response for each transmittor. So we have different transmitters shareing spectrum of frequencies but the signal can be effected at different frequencies. So adapt by sending test signals ( pilots ) and then alter data transmitted to send more information in the parts of frequency that have stronger singnals.

my idea would be would the outputs of the pilots give a sense of the environment you are in ? Might the software make the available to give a sense of where the transmitter is ?

I like idea of picking up this spare information and using it to help identify the location/orientation of the device ( and so the user).

After the talk I spoke to the guy and hay they had considerd it(groovey).