I try to get some mates together to work on a “mobile related” project. Today one of them said that he’s quite busy at the moment and therefore doesn’t think he’ll be able to join. Also he wondered “if this mobile thing’s still hot or just some techie/nerd kinda topic.”

Just found this article via smartmobs to prove him wrong without research:

Young people value their mobile phone more than television, a new study has found.

The survey, conducted by the London School of Economics and Carphone Warehouse, polled over 16,500 young people in the UK to find out how mobile phones have changed the way we live.

Over a quarter of people aged 18-24 highlighted their mobile phone as more important than the internet, TV, MP3 player and games console. Only 11 per cent chose TV, while nearly half voted for the internet.

One in 10 under 25s admitted to being addicted to their phones to some degree.

Full article here.

Aoki, Szymanski and Woodruff discribe different forms of image sharing with cameraphones and discuss a new way to use images, so that the “mutual engagement in social interactions” improves.

The headline of this post is also the name of an interesting article from Jean-Baptiste Labrune and Wendy Mackay. It’s about the development of some jewelry prototpyes that help users to keep in touch with their mates. Besides some nice insights about teenagers’ behaviour and way of thinking, Labrune and Mackay come up with two or three concepts I have to keep in mind. Regarding to upcoming mobile devices they set focus on:

Interperception
The more devices, possibilities, functions and information we have the more we have to think of different ways using these. In contrast to interaction, interperception “refers to the peripheral or even subliminal awareness.” “Direct manipulation and focussed interaction” is not and can’t be always the best choice. A good example for interperception is the subliminal watch.

Experience Networks
Complementary to interperception, with it’s subjective approach, we have the concept of experience networks. Social networks tend to evolve towards experience sharing. Different communication forms are mixed up and used together to create complex narrative structures, often in a sequenced way. I think an early example for this is the Sega Dreamcast controller, which had a small mobile device built into it. Depending on the game you played at home, you were able to continue playing certain things (e. g. improving skills of you character) on this mobile device outside. Taking this a step further user would be able to connect these devices and play against each other or swap items etc.. Back home again these changes affect the “on-screen-gameplay” again. (Maybe there are some products on the market that already do that).

The authors also believe that creativity often happens at the seam of these two concepts, which should be studied making co-creativity analyses.

I like these two concepts of interperception and experience networks and will keep these in mind for my further work.

The Telebead PDF can be found here.

I really like the idea of this application. It tells the users how many passery-by once already met, even you can’t remember their faces.

Scenario 1: A woman who has recently graduated from college has moved to a new city and doesn’t feel at home. The display on her familiarity device reinforces her growing sense of integration within her new neighborhood, and reassures her that familiar people are nearby, even if she does not recognize their faces. When she explores unfamiliar neighborhoods in the larger city, she is occasionally surprised to discover how many people around her she has encountered before.

Scenario 2: In the midst of a frustrating day, an urban professional decides that he doesn’t want to eat lunch in his usual spot. After years at the same job, the large city seems more like a small town. He sees the same people every day in the same places. He wants to escape. As he walks quickly away from his work, he occasionally checks his familiarity device to see if there are any Familiar Strangers nearby. When he finds a street that the device tells him is completely unfamiliar, he chooses a restaurant. He feels as if he’s exploring new territory and though he is still surrounded by other people, he feels much less crowded than he did 15 minutes ago.