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.)
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.
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.
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).
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).
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).
Picking the brains of consumers and American-Idol-style public voting is an increasingly popular strategy for market research and for "community engagement" (see previous Starbucks post). ASUS and Intel have teamed up on WePC.com to let the public share what their ideal computer would be like. Visitors can upload, comment, and vote on proposals (ads for and links to buy ASUS computers are interspersed inbetween).
A few have included sketches (at varying levels of sophistication) to explain holographic displays, water proofing, etc. I like the proposal that already has 212 votes, the Future Proof PC. Quoting dtoid_TheBez,"I would really like to see a pc that is close to future proof. While this idea may be impossible, having to replace a laptop every 2-5 years can get quite expensive."
Normal logic = We control the actions of objects. Perhaps a more interesting train of thought to follow is: How do objects cause people to behave in certain ways? Or how might familiar objects evolve to behave in different ways? The Untethered exhibit at Eyebeam plays with those questions (e.g. a blendie that is activated by human blender sounds, a photocopier that reads astronomy).
A related talk last night on Performing Machines featured some of the work of Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Douglas Repetto, and Adrianne Wortzel. "Trash" and "trashed" objects were used in new ways to make sounds, movements, and group dynamics.
While de-furred Elmos synchronized to perform a battle salute were eyecatching, it was the concepts of renewed and extended use reflected in Scrapyard Challenge and One Day We Will Be Mysterious that cycled in my mind after the discussion.
Paper still often happens before pixels. In my notebooks are sketches of some unborn sites. Some folks have been more eager to digitally document and share their initial inspirations on paper (see description of Twitter on Flickr. More examples to browse here.
