Shiny Digital Things

Sunshine Powered Mobile

2007-06-20T13:29:00.000Z

The World's First Solar Powered Cell Phone

I think this is quite an exciting development and clearly illustrates how light can be used to manipulate these devices.

Final Project Post Listing V1.0

2007-06-20T10:36:00.000Z

Complete listing of research and posts, details on relevance to final prototype and development of ideas. Also puts them in a coherent order.

Introduction

Introduction
- brief introduction to this blog.

The Brief
- outlines the key aims of the project and details what we're expected to research, consider and challenge.

Title Image
- something a little artistic to get ideas going.

Research

Foundations, contexts, general research

Remediation
- an extract which looks at where media come from. Helps to give the project a context and a foundation to work from.

The Gadget Show
- two links, one about Bluetooth and another comparing the available phones on the market. Gave me room to think about the technology itself and see the direction the market was moving in.

Video Banking - Immediacy
- a discussion about a few articles discussing mobile banking and the video banking trials. The key thing here is peoples' constant need for information anywhere they are. The fact that we can now increasingly have this information is opening up more opportunity for other kinds of information to be shared, it's just thinking of a clever way to do it.

Sunshine Powered Mobile
- the ways in which technologies are changing are affecting how these devices work too. Definitely an interesting direction to go in.

Convergence

Device Convergence - Reach for the Sky
- looking at advertisements for mobile phones. Looks specifically at device convergence and remote control via mobile devices. They're no longer just for communication and I felt this was very important when it came to designing an application.

The "Zune"
- tying in with the idea of convergence design I included this article about portable music devices - which are just as relevant to this project as communications devices.

Memory-Stick Single
- again, about how the music world is evolving along with portable devices.

Mobile Doorbell
- another remote application which makes it possible to control your home while you're away from it.

iPhone
- technology moving forward. Phones are definitely becoming miniature computers as technological capabilities advance.

Designing for devices

Stop Stealing Sheep... and invent a tiny font
- details on typefaces designed specifically for mobile applications.

Ideas

Mobile Shopping
- a fairly obvious avenue for a project such as this one. Using a mobile phone for a purchase and then using that to identify yourself at a football game etc is becoming a more common occurance. If I had taken this idea I think it would have needed to have really thought outside the box to find a new area to work with.

Mobile Burgering
- tying in with the mobile shopping idea.

Nokia Exhibits - Distributed Media
- This was what first sparked off the idea of doing something artistic with the device as opposed to something more technically orientated. I really liked what Nokia were doing and felt I wanted to take it further.

Conclusions of research

To come.

Additional links collected as research @ del.icio.us

The Big Idea

The Big Idea
- my stream of conciousness on the idea I was planning to (and did) take forward. Discusses the idea, works out problems, potential areas for expansion and details areas of research.

What's in a Name?
- development of the identity of my idea, selecting a name that suits the key aspects of my proposal.

Scenarios
- developing scenarios to help expose possible problems with my idea and help me work out how best to explain exactly what chaMEleon does.

Something to combat my idea
- the "Living World" interface design for a particular mobile phone. Like my idea it makes use of time of day, location, how much signal is available, and the interface adapts accordingly. This piece helped me to see what had been done, and where it could be developed further.

Mobile Burgering

2007-02-27T14:27:00.000Z

Seems Japan's leading the way by having customers pay for their food via mobile.

Mobile Doorbell

2007-02-21T15:52:00.000Z

I thought this was worth posting here despite the unit being over for everyone else.

I found it on Lifehacker which is a site you should all check out anyway.

Apparently soon you'll be able to answer your doorbell with your mobile from anywhere in the world.

Why not just leave that person with the spare key? I mean otherwise, I don't see how it's a big enough of a deal to warrant the invention...

iPhone

2007-01-10T12:11:00.001Z

It's here and it's shiny.

Scenarios

2006-12-07T10:30:00.000Z

A couple of scenarios to help with explaining aspects of the idea. Also some things I need to think about...

In the simplest terms possible, I want to create a device based application which automatically customises the device’s interface based upon different criteria, either set by the user or by an outside factor.

Adaptive, perceptive, intuitive. All things a handheld device should be. There is no “natural” way to interact with one, but maybe there is something that it can do to behave more naturally.

Doable Now

Temperature/Weather

Yahoo has an interesting desktop widget which along with telling you the weather vitals, visually represents the weather at that time. I can be sitting at home, and know it’s raining in Portsmouth. I really like this additional little feature, and that’s all it really is.

Scenario 1 – Bob’s walking down the street – it’s a clear sunny afternoon. His mobile calculates his location and discovers the weather accordingly. Linking to flickr, the application searches tags for “sunny” and “weather”, selects a photo at random, and displays it on his mobile background. The device selects colours from the photo, and applies a colour scheme or “mood” to the device’s interface accordingly.

Suddenly, the weather changes, a storm breaks. Linking again to flickr, the application searches tags for “storm” and “rain”, selects a photo at random and displays it on his mobile background. The colour scheme shifts from blues and yellows, to silvers and navies.

Not sure how to play this one – show the current weather, or what the weather’s going to be? Or the inverse of the weather. If it’s adapting it should match the weather. How much of a change in the weather? If the weather doesn’t change does it just update every hour?

Colour

Camera phones I’m pretty sure are capable of detecting colour – they seem to have their own magic ways to messing with the exposure so much so there’s not colour left in the photo you’re trying to take…

Scenario 2 – Bob’s going for a walk in some woods. Its spring and everything around is green. The device detects that green is especially prominent in the surroundings and searches flickr for “green” and “color”. The mood also changes to fit the surroundings. As he leaves the woods, the surrounding colours start to change, and once the device detects a noticeable difference, it picks the next most prominent colour and adapts itself accordingly.

People not leaving their phone out. How often does it change? The flickr tags for colours aren’t always accurate. Search the colour group?

Location/Advertising

Scenario 3

Bob decides to go to Paris for the day. Upon arriving, his phone detects his new location and searches for images tagged with “Paris” and updates the phone accordingly. As he walks past the Eiffel Tower, his phone recognises a Bluetooth node and bleeps, the background image changes, but this time to something decided by the promoters of the Eiffel Tower, either an inviting image, or entry prices. Once the device is out of range, it once again finds photos tagged with that location.

------------

I think I'm going to have it so that the device searches tagged photos within it's gallery first and then go to flickr if it can't find anything.

Also as an additional thought, I think there should be a way for the user to save images they like. Maybe there could be an online control panel as well, which would list the images used that day.

What's in a Name?

2006-12-06T13:35:00.000Z

I decided The Big Idea needed a name, and eventually an identity. But I'll think on the identity part a bit more when I'm developing the demonstrations.

Anyway, there's lots of things that the application is/should be/would be so I listed some words...

Intuitive, instinctive, artistic, adaptive (evolving), blendable, automatic, emotional, natural, perceptive...

What came to mind was a chameleon.

So playing with that idea a bit, the application's titled chaMEleon - it's focus is on the user, hence the emphasis on "me".

I also tried taking out the vowels, so it was just "chmln", but that made very little sense.

Mobile Shopping

2006-11-30T20:22:00.000Z

I read this article in the Guardian (October 19th) about shopping with your mobile. It talks about a great deal of things, like electronic tickets for Manchester City games, and the ways they're looking at developing this idea - similar to the Oyster Card gone mobile. They say the system is secure - so there's plenty one could develop from that.

Memory-Stick Single

2006-11-30T19:44:00.000Z

I did one day actually buy a paper, the Guardian actually, and in it was an article about Keane's latest single which they brought out on a memory stick... I think it's quite interesting to read - it talks about something Robbie Williams did on a memory card intended to be used on mobile phones and PDAs - but due to cost it didn't take off. I should imagine that is now becoming an avenue for the future.

It also talks about the history of music platforms a bit, apparently Jamiroquai released his greatest hits album to mobile users first.

There's definitely a little world evolving there.

Read the article here.

Stop Stealing Sheep... and invent a tiny font.

2006-11-30T19:13:00.000Z

I remembered seeing something in Spiekermann's book on digital device typefaces, and have included it here. It's quite technical, but also quite interesting.

The Mini 7 series he talks about is available here, but unfortunately costs money. I found some other fonts on dafont.com - they have the Nokia font, and if you search for mini it comes up with some interesting fonts that may be of use.

>Click here to see the full page<

Spiekermann, E & Ginger, E.M. (2003). Stop Stealing Sheep (2nd Edition). California: Peachpit Press.

Hmm, something to combat my idea...

2006-11-30T18:45:00.000Z

"Besides graphical assignation manufacturer decided to modify wallpaper depending on time of day: in the morning you see sun, and in the evening you see blinding lights of Kremlin wharf, cars will have their headlights turned on. An interesting addition to interface, but that’s not all, there are more interface improvements.

Time is not the only event that can be transferred into graphical approach. For example network reception level: good signal – sky is blue, no signal or weak one – sky is covered with clouds. At first you don’t pay much attention to this small feature, but after a month you will look on the sky instead of standard bar, information can be acquired instantly."

Read the rest. (Search within the page for "Living World")

I love their ideas and what they've done with it. Though it sort of covers what I was talking about with time and location in regards to my idea - which is a little annoying. But it still leaves room for me to develop on the other areas.

There's definitely some innovative thinking in there, worth a look. And I want the phone.

The "Zune".

2006-11-30T16:09:00.000Z

I didn't even know there was going to be a Microsoft competitor until I saw this article - but then I never paid attention to the I-Pod all that much either. If you can't afford something, you tend to ignore it.

As far as I'm aware the I-Pod doesn't have wireless capabilities yet - I did find this article discussing the possibilities that would open up (and also they raise the question of who wants to watch a movie on a 3 inch screen? But I suppose the way sharing media is changing, that's no longer such a huge issue) - I guess Microsoft beat them to it?

Anyway, this article talks about what the Zune can do, with all it's wireless amazingness, and what Apple say to that. I personally think it's a bit late for Microsoft to launch a competitor in a hope to overtake the I-Pod, but I guess we shall see.

ETA: I just found this - the Zune's already second place in the US MP3 market - but still has a long way to go to catch up to I-Pod.

Another Metro, November 13th.

>Click to see the full article<

Remediation

2006-11-30T15:48:00.000Z

"Television, film, computer graphics, digital photography and virtual reality: our culture recognises and uses all of these technologies as media..." >click here to read the full extract<

Bolter, JD and Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation. London: The MIT Press.

I read Bolter and Grusin's Remediation a few weeks ago, and whilst the book in general was a nice solid foundation for thought, I didn't tag a lot of the pages as directly useful for this project. I did however tag this extract, I think it links into what Richard was saying in his lecture about different media coming together, the way television's changing, and the whole idea of convergence, market niches and what not. It's not very long, but worth thinking about.

Video Banking - Immediacy

2006-11-30T15:27:00.000Z

>Click to read the full article<

Another article from the Metro - I can't afford a real paper. November 13th Edition.

This reminds me of something the guys who wrote Remediation talk about - the need for immediacy. It talks about the fact that they are trialling it based on the way their customers want to bank. The technology available now I guess for them to be able to do this - and it's certainly a novel idea. But like the article says - the customers would need to have the technology, and the means to fund having a 3G enabled phone... I guess we'll see how it goes.

Additional articles can be found here and here. The official site for First Direct's mobile trials is here.

A link to an article about HSBC allowing customers to access their accounts via text messaging is here.

Nokia Exhibits - Distributed Media

2006-11-29T20:47:00.000Z

Originally found here at the course blog.

Nokia - Connect to Art

"Connect to Art is a collection of modern art for your mobile Nokia phone. This new media of art is innovative and inspiring. It's always with you, you can create a collection of your own!"

I really like this idea, and I think it ties in nicely with my idea - sharing art, it seems like such a good idea. I'd download something if only I could remember my model number. Haha.

I'm guessing this will become a more popular way of getting things out there - people are already sharing all sorts of things virally, mobile to mobile etc. Nothing's limited to sending a forward email anymore and phones/devices are becoming more for entertainment and a talking point.

Device Convergence - Reach for the Sky

2006-11-29T19:43:00.000Z

These two adverts were in the November 13th edition of the Metro. A free paper available to anyone who commutes on a train that's been anywhere near London that day.

Click the image to see the full advert.

This first one really shows the convergence between devices - music and the phone. It plays on the idea that the music you listen to could influence who you call, will "get you talking", despite advertising it as a music player.

This second advert is for the service Sky now offer where you can text your Sky+ box to record things should you forget to set it. An interesting and innovative (but unecessary?) way to remotely control a household appliance. I guess there's plenty of other things that could happen with this - particulary with that "Smart" fridge thing - you could check it's contents whilst you're at the supermarket...

The Gadget Show

2006-11-29T18:10:00.000Z

Whilst browsing the Gadget Show site, I found two things I thought were relevant to this project.

Why have I got a Bluetooth?
Interesting little article on the whys and wherefores of Bluetooth and some talk about it's uses - some uses weirder than others.

An article on different mobile phones written in Marchtime.
This talks about the phones that are out now, and what they thought of them. They seem to love the Motorola, I don't know why - I never was a fan of their interface or their phone design. Probably down to when I did have one it was quite different to what I was used to using.

I love random trivia.

2006-11-29T17:50:00.000Z

"Nokia was originally a company set up to produce toilet paper." (Link)

That's probably the best thing I've heard all day.

So what's the big idea?

2006-11-29T16:34:00.000Z

In the simplest terms possible, I want to create a device based application which automatically customises the device’s interface based upon different criteria, either set by the user or by an outside factor.

I don’t think mobile devices are all that nice to look at anymore. The evolution of the phone has been a peculiar one, moving from the trendy, customisable, “everyone must have” Nokias, to smaller phones, and now to colour screens, back to larger devices – of which the case and various things are not so easy to customise – in fact, I think that industry may have disappeared altogether. I no longer see the stalls for the phone shells at markets and things. The choice given is a colour in a specific range or none at all. And once you have it you’re stuck with it.

Nokia's phone history - has a nice little flash demo of their models over the years.

I know this mostly links to product design, but I think it is interesting the way people are happier now to just settle for what they’re given, and customise their phones in other ways. What with mobile cameras, customising the actual interface has become a lot easier. I remember the days when you had to pay £3 just to get a different screensaver on the old Nokias – I have no idea what other companies offered, but from what I remember the Nokia was the most customisable in that sense too.

This is something I’d like to pick up on, looking at the interface and the way people interact with their phones, some sort of application as opposed to say a site usable on a phone. I’m feeling artistic. There is of course still the challenge of making the application usable on any device, and what I’ve gleaned from looking into device interface design will come in handy there.

So thinking about the way devices have evolved, and the way things are converging, I was pondering upon the idea of automatic customisation.

I really like this whole linking thing that’s going on with things like flickr and delicious, and all the things Richard talked about in his lecture got me to thinking – particularly what he said about the idea of being near somewhere like a gallery and having a picture sent to your phone of something that was inside.

In particular I’ve been thinking about the way things are tagged in flickr, and the different applications available in flickr – like the screensaver clock for example that pulls images of numbers to display the time, based upon their tags. There are also applications out there that will automatically change your desktop wallpaper based on various parameters.

I like that these things exist – and I think they could quite easily be taken to mobile devices. I’m looking to take it a few steps further – there are different things you could do with this, particularly if it came down to making the application intuitive.

For example, the application could change a device’s background/screensaver based upon:

Mood
Temperature/weather
Light
Sound
Colour
Calls/messages/other usage
Location
Time
Events
Advertising
User choice

The way one would do this with those different things is the tricky part. Some of them I think would be doable now, but things like mood I think are something for the future.

I had this thought when we were discussing redesigning the mobile phone and it’s interface – based upon the theory that there is no natural, intuitive way to interact with one – I mean there’s nothing much out there in the natural world that a phone is really based around. But there are conventions one expects based on a land-line phone – for example picking up and dialling. I thought about my hairdryer, which has a feature in that when you pick it up it switches on, and when you put it down it switches off. The older household phones, all you had to do was pick up and dial – but with mobiles you have to press a button and dial or vice versa. I think that’s starting to be mimicked in household phones now too.

I think when they brought in voice tagging with phone numbers (the thing where you say “call suchandsuch”) as a more natural way of doing things – but I don’t know anyone who uses it. To me that would be a logical way of doing it as you’re going to have a conversation and you mostly initiate a conversation by talking, but I think with the past precedence of household phones, it just never took off. Plus the interface to actually use it wasn’t that great either and I should imagine the voice activation was something you had to battle with.

It was this kind of thing that started me thinking about the mood customisation, but that has questions attached to it, like how do you monitor it? And what would the image change to? How do you make it interface-less?

The guys from the BT ideas lab did suggest some things with regards to that, like Galvanic skin sensors, the way people use a device based on their mood (shouting, shaking it etc). I still don’t know how well this would work now – but I’m sure there’ll be something in the future which would work with this, and I suppose this is the blue sky area of my idea. I like the idea of looking into the psychology of it – like if you’re in a bad mood, what image would maybe affect that, bring you out of it, or send you further into it?

Things like time, light, temperature/weather and usage can all be done now. The camera lens on a phone can easily detect light, or no light – although I’m not sure what or why this would change the background image. It could also interpret colour – which would be quite an interesting one, especially if it were to be coupled with something “ambient” – for instance the backlight/lights in the buttons changing colour to match. You could almost have a chameleon type device that blends with its surroundings.

Sound would be a really interesting – and yet complex one, depending on how you looked at it. You could either go with having it pick up the sound of your surroundings, somehow interpret that and then find tagged images accordingly, or take a simpler approach – for those using it as an mp3 player, and use images tagged with whatever band the user was listening to at the time.

The idea of calls and messages affecting the wallpaper image was something that came to me when the BT guys were talking about the ambient plant and the way it could react to family relationships – not having called for a while etc. This could easily link through to your own flickr if you had a set of photos tagged with family, friends etc or even the gallery on the phone, it could then change based on who had or hadn’t called/messaged – I think that could go either way. Either it could show photos of the people you’ve interacted with the most that day, or the ones you’ve interacted with the least almost as a prompt to call.

With regards to time I was thinking stars in the sky during the night, or sunsets when it’s sunset etc. That would be quite nice. Or one could even set it up like to display photos people had taken at that time.

Location, events and advertising were brought about by what Richard was talking about. I think this would link in with Bluetooth nodes outside of institutions, like galleries, to advertise what you can see inside. Advertising, particularly of events could be based around things you sign up for to be notified of in email or what have you – this would allow marketers another level of reach, particularly to people who would be interested in what they have to offer.

Location in general could also be linked in with global positioning – flickr does have the option of location tags – stay in a location long enough and the images could be what other people have taken there.

As for user choice, I was thinking it would work similarly to the background changer for the PC, in that the user chooses tags and it displays images accordingly.

The interface itself would give the user the option to choose which method of tag-interpretation the device was going to use, how often to change it depending on what kind of tag-interpretation it was, blocked tags/parental controls type things, I think there should also be a “no repeat” option, and perhaps one should be able to set it to “select from most interesting” – as flickr has that whole “interestingness” thing going.

What features were available would also be dictated by what the application could detect – eg global positioning, Bluetooth, camera…

The application would also need to detect screen size, crop and resize the images automatically.

I will form this into a proper proposal once I’ve done some more research – this is more of a stream of consciousness.

But there it is, the big idea. I'll sort the sketchbook and other things out in time for Friday.

Title Image

2006-11-29T16:33:00.000Z

Title page in sketchbook.

Introduction - better late than never

2006-11-26T14:32:00.000Z

This blog is for my Design for Digital Devices unit. I've been working in my sketchbook but figured today/tomorrow I'd try and catch this up with the things I'd been looking at and my proposed idea and it's research.

I did start a blog way back when when we were supposed to intending to use it for this, but ended up using it for random things. That's here.

Incidently, my delicious tags might not be 100% relevent, because I have a habit of bookmarking anything and everything I find interesting when I'm surfing the interweb.