Week 21 Log

Week beginning 27/02/2012

This week firstly involved research into similar technologies as well as related designs. The concept of ‘Social TV’ was explored and similarities between aspects of its concept and ‘Transient Memory’ were identified i.e. the idea of creating an experience with a virtual social element. A virtual social element here is one that where the people involved are not physically close to each-other i.e. within speaking distance. There were some similarities between Social TV and the ‘share chair’ concept mocked up in the cartoon strip from the previous week. There was an element of being about to share what is a very social experience. However within the context of this project, the shared experience is intimate and only involves a small number of people. A large amount of money is being invested in developing this technology and MIT and BT are two institutions which are involved with it.

There was continued work on the contextual report which had the effect of clarifying some thoughts, especially that of the idea of presence. Presence here is simply that the users are aware of each-others locations and are able to interact with each-other in a meaningful and valuable way. There was also some further academic research into cognitive psychology, specifically into objects and memory. The purpose of this is to support my current findings of how objects and memory are connected. There is lots of research into object recognition memory, and one finding was that if an object is taken out of context, people try to find it by trying to remember where their associations with it i.e. where they have experienced it. This supports my suggestions that an object is a ‘link’ to a memory or memories. Facial recognition works the same way.

There was also some ideation work conducted this week. A counter-factual scenario was explored which was ‘what if we had to have a mobile phone for every person we wanted to contact’. Some conclusions were gathered from this which were beneficial to the project: would we be more selective about who we wanted to ‘carry around’ with us, and that the form of each phone would play a larger part. The idea of ‘selection is important to this project as the device doesn’t have networking capabilities i.e. it can’t connect to new people and enable communication between all members. Also form is important as the object would ‘represent’ the person more strongly than if it could connect to anyone. Should the device be customisable? A stop motion advert was created using plastic models which has the potential of being able to be shown to users. The set can also be incorporated into user testing and the user provided with clay to explore their own alterations or ideas. This is a research technique that will be tested.

A ‘teddy share’ prototype was made and functional requirements developed for it. It was made from paper and a higher-fidelity prototype will be made. Problems were identifies and improved on through usage of this system for example the issues of ‘what happens after interaction is done’.

The goals for the following week: further prototyping and testing of the thesis with them. The thesis itself will be examined and adjusted if necessary. There will also be the development of a user base as well as functional and non-functional requirements for them. Two books on research methodologies are being read and findings applied to the project. These books are ‘Survey Research’ by Robert Sapsford, and ‘Qualitative Interview Interviewing’ by Tom Wengraf.