ConnectingTheDots

Mixed Reality Golf: Enhancing Big Urban Games with Mobile Devices

2009-09-21T15:05:34-04:00

Dropped in for playing/testing of a new iPhone game at Conflux this weekend. Created by co-founders of Come Out and Play, Gigaputt turned the East Village into our virtual golf course. Laid over real-world maps, avenues were transformed into fairways as we picked out our clubs, followed our wayward balls, and raced to complete holes. While I've been seeing many location-based apps in development, the type of interaction designed is typically still pretty solitary: announcing "hey i'm here", rating a venue as liked or disliked, or tagging with a personal photo. As a multi-player game, Gigaputt engaged us with changing our surroundings and reacting to each other (not to mention the confused strangers on the street). It was also nice not carrying around heavy golf clubs, and the hint of that matrix-like downloadable supplement brings ideas for other kinds of possibilities.

While not networked, on the theme of augmenting physical surfaces with digital info, recent demos like Pattie Maes' (MIT Media Lab Fluid Interface Group) talk at TED on sixthsense, again points to a near future of designing experiences that go beyond twitter-like data seeding and that moves towards enabling behaviors with data as the enhancer and natural biproduct. (A few more fun interfaces to browse like an interactive mirror and public lasergames here.)

Playing with the Google Logo

2009-09-21T11:51:21-04:00

Since its simple font and primary color days, Google's logo now experiences regular visual morphs. This playfulness creates attention and conversation around what folks probably don't normally actively discuss, company logos. Notably, for those following the recent series of mysteries surrounding abducted Ls and Os, the plot has now been revealed (a birthday tribute to H.G. Wells).

Netflix Challenge Prize vs. Human Computational Games to Improve Relevance

2009-07-30T18:14:15-04:00

The nail biting "end" to the epic Netflix Challenge has been widely covered over the last few days. Cited as an example of prize economics and the crowdsourcing of innovation, the contest drew over 50,000 contestants. Catching particular attention was the characteristics of the top teams and how they were formed (BellKor--a cross-company, international group of statisticians, machine learning experts, and computer engineers--and the Ensemble--a last minute merger of other former teams). Similar to the instances of collective intelligence that have occured in pop culture (e.g. highlighted in Convergence Culture with fans of Survivor), communities formed to closely collaborate on Netflix's complicated and apparently tantalizing problem.

The Netflix Challenge had a big prize, clear question, and clear end goal for contestants. In contrast, human computational games usually have small incentives and indirect end goals, but have also been applied to improve the search for relevance. One of the first popular human computational game was the ESP game, where people tackled image recognition. Leveraging the same premise (the >200m hours/day spent on games could be used to solve tricky problems), Microsoft Research wondered how a game could be used to answer the question: "Given a web page, what queries will effectively find this web page?"

What they came up with was Page Hunt. Players are shown a random web page, and must guess the query that would find the page in the top few results on a search engine (LIve Search). If their query word(s) ran and matched the top URL results, players got points. Microsoft in turn got data elicited from players, providing metadata to improve algorithms for pages, for query alterations/refinement, and for identifying ranking issues.

For example, using bixtext matching to learn from their game data, they found top scoring query alterations (iht=International Herald Tribune, jlo=Jennifer Lopex, capital city airport = Kentucky Airport, etc). Another resulting finding was that as the length of URL(in characters) increases, the page becomes harder to find.

The Netflix Challenge attracted brainiacs to persist for nearly three years. As perhaps a hint that shorter, smaller incentives can also spur productive mass activity, Page Hunt was fun enough (designed with time limitations, points + bonus points, leaderboard, and taboo queries/constraints) that 47% of sessions were from people who played twice or more, and 16% from those who played five times or more. A research paper on that experiment to use games to improve search here.

Cell Phone Magic

2009-06-12T14:26:54-04:00

Magicians are exploring a new prop, cell phones. In single, unedited phone cam shots, perceptions are foiled with ironically low-tech tactics. One popular trick has been the disappearing Samsung HD phone ad challenge with associated reveal. One man has branded himself as a virtual magician and recently taken more hi-tech twists. His deft card tricks are enhanced by augmented reality (supported largely by free tools). For me, there is something less mysterious about the technology enhanced part. As with most 2.0 things, this 2.0 magician also wants to know what viewers think.

Akoha: Seeding Kindness with Social Games

2009-04-14T12:46:48-04:00

When I first heard about Akoha, I loved the idea. I eagerly signed up to be a Beta tester and was excited when my set of mission cards arrived in the mail. Still love the idea, but have been thinking about why instead of being part of the leaderboard, I've only played one card.

Akoha is a MMP, mixed reality game. The game centers around accumulating Karma points via real world missions of kindness (for example +125 for "Thank Someone", +100 for "Make Someone Smile", +200 for "Donate an Hour of Your Time") linked to coded cards. This player probably reflects the ideal user experience and impact Akoha was aiming for.

What made the game sticky and immersive for her, but not for me? The primary adjective Akoha uses to describe its game is "social." Theres two key dimensions to that: the social behaviors required to play the game and the social network of "friends" players accumulate during gameplay. For me, that second aspect of social was too challenging to help motivate the first. I felt like a lone player in the social game. While there were many players in Canada, there were few players in New York. To play I had to recruit friends or strangers (most missions required physical proximity to complete) - which is also part of the beauty in seeding kindness. However, when "the work" of finding playmates > the reward of playing it's more difficult to get to the sweet spot (critical mass of friends and missions played to feel the impact, the addictive part of play).

Since then Akoha has added a dynamic Community Map showing where players and missions are happening. It's still a little clunky (requires several zoom-ins to find specific locations of interest) and could be more efficient in visualizing search interests, but tools like it are a step towards creating a means to finding friends, feeling connected to the larger community, and seeing impact. (Looking at other social, location-oriented games like foursquare, one could also imagine interesting ways an Akoha mobile app could encourage play.)

The reward and reputation system also impacts stickyness -- motivates embedding play into everyday social experiences vs. singular novelty play moments (especially for those with busy lives). What do "Karma points" mean to players? Is simply accumulating "Karma points" compelling? Found this interesting thread of user feedback about wanting more of an addictive factor. The users had quite a few good design suggestions (e.g. adding levels, mastery identities, mission combos, time-based rewards, currency that tied to real world donations).

If the thousands of cards played are any hint, I do think games like Akoha have huge potential. Influencing behaviors and tapping beyond existing social networks are powerful dynamics, especially for improving global causes. Bridging the digital and "real" world is also a challenge we are just beginning to tackle. All said, I'll be staying in the Akoha game and learning from how well people play it forward.

Making Twitter Meaningful

2009-03-26T12:46:19-04:00

The viral Twouble with Twitters has gotten some acknowledging laughs. Funny men Jon Stewart and Colbert have also recently joked about the seemingly useless time suck and stream of information. But as Twitter grows, so has the number of people experimenting with how to build on top of the simple interface -- creating applications to help filter and facilitate community meaning making.

For me, some of the more interesting uses of Twitter have been for friend/crowd-sourcing human answers, rapid reporting around an event/emergency, and directing attention towards causes. Squidoo recently release TwttrStrm to help folks gather answers to one spot. An example of what that might look like is the summary of Hacking Education Twitters (pulling hashtag #HackEdu). Focusing on a particular niche, ExecTweets is a new site aggregating tweets from business executives. And more like a general Twitter search engine, Tweefind pulls tweets about certain keywords according to popularity rank (akin to Google page rank).

Will also be interesting to watch as folks get more creative about designing a "need to follow." In LA, Kogi, a hybrid Korean BBQ/Taco truck, has put a twist to its Twittering. If you want their taco, to find the van you must follow their Twitter.

ARGs for Collective Innovation: Ruby's Bequest Raising Up 1000 Voices

2009-03-09T23:57:23-04:00

While slowly attracting participants with hints of whats to come and with virtual coins to begin seeding content, today Ruby's Bequest fully launched with a challenge to players to find 1000 voices to answer the question -- "what are your hopes, your fears about the future of caring." The new ARG from the Institute for the Future hopes to stimulate some collective wisdom to solve the mystery of who Ruby Woods is, and in doing so, perhaps also about the future of a public good.

ARGs have been used as successful marketing tools (The Beast for the movie A.I., Art of the Heist for Audi A3, I Love Bees for Halo 2). In engaging players, these MMP multi-platform, blended reality games have demonstrated the potential collective intelligence and collaborative action that can emerge through game play (interesting essay on the deployment of I Love Bees). A few recent examples have experimented with the notion that ARGs may also be effective for harnessing collective innovation on societal issues. Last October, Traces of Hope (sponsored by the British Red Cross) explored the world of a Ugandan refugee and Superstruct (another IFTF ARG) sought to brainstorm solutions to five super-threat scenarios in 2019.

Smart Grid Augmented Reality

2009-03-02T22:03:27-05:00

Still feeling the novelty value, finally printed out the GE Solar Panel Marker and tilted around a mini hologram of big technology in my hands. The marker once pointed at a webcam unfolds a green scene of wind turbines or solar panels. Limited interactivity beyond viewing at different angles (my blowing didn't succeed in triggering much wind power). Even more fun is watching the reactions of others trying it. For the extra curious, they share the FLARTtoolkit source code.

A few other companies have also used webcam based AR in their ads, like the Mini Cabrio (black and white magazine ad displaying a 3D model car).

Quest to Learn Opens: Games-based School

2009-02-17T17:21:11-05:00

Helping to spread the word about a project I've been involved with, Quest to Learn.

Inspired by the media-rich environment that kids are now engaged with outside of school (according to a recent Pew report 97% of teens now play digital games) and the underlying design principles of games, the school was created to reimagine and foster the type of learning that is possible today.

It's not a school where kids will sit around playing commercial videogames, rather its a school that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences. A key focus is on the ability of games and other forms of digital media to model the complexity and promise of "systems" - the type of thinking skills now required to succeed in today's global environment. Read this "Day in the Life" of a student narrative and visit Quest's website for a more complete picture.

The school is currently looking for both teachers and students (in New York).

Net-Map: The Process of Visualizing

2009-02-10T00:11:29-05:00

Especially for those with 100s or 1000s of "friends", it can be challenging to know your network. Various visualization tools have been created to help people keep track of their universes: from Vizster (interactive sociogram for exploring the community structure of sites like friendster), to more recent Fidg't (using Flickr and LastFM tags as "magnets" to similar members), and the myriad Twitter visualization tools (exploring networks by tweet geography, topic, volume, etc).

More often than not, these digital visualizations are ready-made by developers or graphic designers; users view or play with automatically generated mappings of their network.

Net-map is a low-tech tool that focuses less on the end product and moreso on the process of creating the nodes and links of influence. The interview-based social mapping tool has been used in rural communities of Ghana and Chile to help people understand, discuss, and improve situations with multiple-influencers (netmaptoolbox process photostream).

Remixing: Keyboard as Instrument

2009-02-02T23:23:41-05:00

Am a little biased, but the guys of Eclectic Method are awesome remixers (creators of very danceable and watchable live mashing and scratching of music videos, tv, movies, video games).

They've been "playing" the news recently, and sharing a tool that lets anyone play sights and sounds from the Inauguration (by tapping your keyboard like an instrument).

Along the lines of the older remix widget below (also fun to play with) and a nice intro for those who may want to respond to Colbert's Remix Challenge.

Whopper Sacrefice: How Valuable Are Your Facebook Friends

2009-01-21T23:07:07-05:00

WHOPPER Sacrifice was short-lived. The app let people cash in their FB friends. 10 deleted friends = 1 free Whopper. Facebook disabled the app after the desire for a free burger proved stronger then 233,906 friendships. One fan documented his trade, so folks can still watch a profile going under in flames. Those de-friended can also still send angry-grams.

Some fun valuation methodologies of Facebook were calculated based on the Whopper. From a social capital perspective, does make you think about the relative values of your virtual connections. Wonder whether those more liberal with the Ignore button were less likely to sacrefice their friends, than those with 100s of connections. Or whether people would be as ready to sacrefice their LinkedIn vs Twitter vs ? network.

DIWO! (Do It With Others)

2009-01-07T23:41:45-05:00

Appreciated the sentiment Zach Lieberman started with this Dorkbot evening -- the gist, 'DYI is popular, but I want to DIWO.' While his openframeworks (cross platform c++ library for creative coding) will hopefully enable more DYI, his projects seem to have a DIWO slant (most recently Lights On!, a NYE performance of music and building lights that married the technical talents of collaborators).

Perhaps an accidental theme, the second speaker (creator of playful technology embedded fashion) also seemed to be moving from pieces that revolve around individual human behavior to pieces that explore and stimulate group interactions. Some of the dresses were actually quite cute, but likely not hitting the mass market anytime soon.

Buy a Pixel

2008-12-21T23:41:55-05:00

There have been copycats of the Million Dollar Homepage -- the "why didn't i think of that?!?" idea of 2005, when a 21 year old Brit successfully sold 1,000,000 pixels at a $1 each to fund his college education.

Grameen Foundation is offering a heftier price per pixel ($10) at stoppovertynow.org. Instead of buying a permanent shout out or advertising, each donation brightens, pixel by pixel, an image of what the funds are working towards. Mousing over the image reveals the names and comments of pixel purchasers (with options to stay anonymous).

Photographic Adventure of Nick or the Samsung Phone? + thisisreality.org

2008-12-09T23:45:14-05:00

Nick Turpin took a month long trip around the world searching for his next subject based on where the public clicked most on his previous photo (22 shots total - nice concept and interface, also nice budget to move with the votes). Featuring a youtube diary, Flickr photostream, Twitter, and Google Map, the recent promotion taps into familiar public applications and type of creative "direct-me"/ "follow-me" social projects we've been seeing some artists pursuing on the web.

On the topic of nice interfaces, it's worth following the sad canary at thisisreality.org (clicks bring tweetie back to life and lead to more facts about clean coal).

Augmented Reality iPhone Virtual Pet

2008-12-02T23:55:14-05:00

The folks at Georgia Tech's Augmented Environments Lab may enable iPhone owners to also be virtual puppy owners. Reminicent of the popular Tamagotchi, you can feed him water, direct him to run, and even make him another furry playmate. Aside from an evolution in graphic quality since the virtual pets of the late 90s, this pup also has one paw in the real world (StB tracker allowing moveable links to physical spaces).

How much does the touchable interface and interaction with real world environments change/enhance player experience? David Perry's TED talk gives some striking visual examples of the steep trajectory of both game graphics as well as game design that pushes emotional connections.

Poladroid

2008-11-21T00:28:05-05:00

Quite a few fans of Polaroid have tried to campaign for its eternal survival.

Not sure if Poladroid offers much solace. The application lets people edit their digital photos into those iconic white frames. I like its familiar sound of the photo emerging from the camera, and its slow Polaroid-like fade-in of an increasingly vibrant image. Cool application concept, but for me, something is still missing in the digital replication. I love the texture of film on my fingers and the immediacy of the physical image repeated a few minutes after the physical moment. Perhaps Poladroid might feel even more comforting as a mobile app. As is, it is already attracting a following.

Fan & Feedback Networks for Your Imagination

2008-11-11T11:05:53-05:00

From ffffound to Behance Network to Wordpress to Flickr, I clicked across the sketch trail of a concept tinkerer. From the comment threads, it seems he has quite a few fans asking where they can buy the depicted mobile devices with double screens and immediate overlay translation and internet search. He says he has no plans to monetize his ideas (already occupied as a graphic designer), but some folks still gave advice and encouragement. Very Open Source in spirit.

There are a number of sites aggregating jolts of inspiration and its fascinating to observe how potential fans and feedback can emerge for napkin ideas. Related, here's a nice video visualization of Python's evolution (part of an experiment called code_swarm visualizing the collaborative creation of open source applications).