musings of a social architect

Short movies on mobile

One of my favorite recent "finds" is Paul Golding's blog -- stimulating reading, he's got some creative ideas about mobile applications, as in this recent post.

I recently signed up to the website Trigger Street, which is a community website for amateur (budding) movie makers and script writers... a lot more can be done to make the mobile movie experience more compelling...I am intrigued by what forms might emerge from the potential to alter movie content using mobile presence information. Taking location as an example, watching the movie in location X produces a different cut from watching it in location Y. In this regard, I am especially interested in the prospect of co-location shooting. In other words, a movie maker shoots some scenes in the actual location that I watch it from. Watching a movie in the location it was shot has a surreal quality, but I expect that there is scope for some very creative concepts.

Text Messages drive interactive narrative

Revolution reports about a new game where players use text messages to suggest acts of revenge for commonplace work scenarios, with the possibility that their responses will control the characters' next moves.

Text Revenge is the latest game by the creators of the first "text mobile soap opera", 'Ms Cellulite', and offers participants the chance of cash prizes and control of the action. The first situation is 'Emma's Dilemma', and asks participants to suggest what Emma, a secretary, should do when she discovers another secretary has been using the company credit card to buy things for herself.

American Idol Trivia Game

News.com reports on some new mobile services offered by Fox to support American Idol.

Cingular Wireless has announced a bunch of Idol features for customers. Among the Idol-on-your-phone attractions: a wireless fan club; a vote number reminder that sends text messages listing all the idols and their codes; Idol trivia (just how many times did Simon utter the word "dreadful" during season three?); and ring tones.

I've been dreaming about creating a real-time Trivia game that's based on watching the behavior of people on a broadcast TV show. That game mechanic has the potential to take TV-viewing in a new and promising direction.

Meet me by the Nike poster..

Paul Golding writes a provocative post about how groups could negotiate their meeting-place using mobile services. Some choice quotes:

It seems a sensible idea to have a shared meeting service on mobiles so that any group, no matter how small or large, can arrange meetings...The popular meeting places would be ranked in order of popularity, but not just from the presets. Users could specify their own meeting places and these could be made public, so that others can benefit from local knowledge, like the existence of well-known features, such as a water fountain or monument etc.

Connecting this to a previous meme on "air-tagging" (street logos), it would be interesting to include the possibility to meet at certain logo points, real or virtual. These could potentially be marked in the application with geographical annotation (e.g. GPS co-ordinates or street name) or left un-marked, so that only those "in the know" would know where to meet.

There is also a likely connection with the emerging theme of active posters, such as being delivered by the likes of Hypertag to promote new kinds of advertising engagements. It would be interesting to see advertisers exploit this possibility. Putting it crudely, one could imagine "meeting at the Nike poster"

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Check out these Apple Developer Trading Cards. I like the spirit of these cards - and I'mn really curious who put 'em together.

Making Feedback Explicit

I recently did a consulting gig for a company that's trying to apply game design & technologies to corporate IT challenges. It's an intriguing premise -- and this experience got me thinking again about which aspects of game design are "translateable" to other domains. I've scribbled some thoughts on this before - but the new idea floating around my head is:

Games Make Feedback Explicit

I think this is one of the most powerful -- and translateable -- ideas from game design into the wider field of digital systems design.

More later...

Tamagotchi screensavers for mobile

textually.org reports on Jamster's 'Living Wallpaper' for mobile phones. Really intriguing idea - I'd love to see this in action & feel how it plays.

Jamster, a mobile entertainment portal company, has announced the UK launch of "Living Wallpaper", which enables mobile phone displays to turn into moving action platforms that change depending on how the mobile is being used. The character's mood and behaviour will change depending on the status of the phone, and the user will also be able to control the character. For example its hunger will be satisfied when the phone battery is charged

Follow The Leader - an interview with Eric von Hippel

Great piece in The Feature about user-driven innovation, centered around an interview with Eric Von Hippel. MIT professor and author of Democratizing Innovation. I did a workshop with Eric's group a couple of years ago, and he's got a fascinating and well-researched POV. I learned a lot from the workshop, and enjoyed reading this artlcle. Here are some choice quotes.

Eric von Hippel's new book, Democratizing Innovation, documents how breakthrough innovations are developed by "lead users," -- users with a high incentive to solve problem, and that often develop solutions that the market will want in the future.

Von Hippel argues that a user-centered innovation process -- one that harnesses lead users -- offers great advantages over the manufacturer-centric innovation model that has been the mainstay of commerce for hundreds of years. To this end, he has developed a systematic model for companies to tap into the innovation potential of their lead user communities.

TheFeature: Why would mobile companies want to pay attention to lead users? After all, they already have in-house developers and targeted developer programs.

Von Hippel: First, let's be clear about lead users. These are highly motivated individuals, or even companies, who are on the cutting edge of technology use. They are not necessarily the people on the payroll or members of the development community, and this is a good thing because, while professional developers may have leading-edge technical skills, it's the lead users that have the leading-edge needs. This motivates them to look for and prototype solutions. As we know, necessity is the mother of invention.

Lead users therefore tend to develop functionally novel services -- services where the mobile vendor or service provider is likely to say, "Oh, I had no idea you even wanted to do that!" Just look at SMS: it's a lead-user innovation that caught the industry by surprise.

It pays to systematically identify and draw from lead-user innovation. The approach allows companies to draw upon a lot of new service prototyping and testing done by others, and for very little investment. A mobile games developer may hire over a hundred developers, but it can recruit thousands of lead users to develop on its proprietary platforms for free. Companies just have to do it right.

TheFeature: What do you mean by doing it right?

Von Hippel: I describe two methods in my book. The "lead user project method" is where companies tap into lead-user innovation; the "toolkit innovation project method" is about giving lead users the tools they need to tinker and innovate.

In both cases, the process used to find the lead users with the best ideas works a lot like tracking a hot news story. Like a journalist, the company has to ask the right questions of the right people, and network. The networking technique we have developed, which I call "pyramiding", is built on the fact that people who have a serious interest in a subject are likely to know others who are more expert than they are.

But don't design a Web questionnaire to identify lead users. A standardized survey won't provide enough information to tell you which people might be the actual lead users. You have to comb the Web for the publications, forums and thinking places where lead users might congregate, and you have to get out of your cubicle to meet them.