Profiles are a handy thing on the web, as you usually can’t have direct (some would say “real”) contact with others: the internet lets you filter information at a probably unprecedented scale, which makes finding friends with the same or coresponding interests a lot easier.
What if shared interest actually don’t matter (so much)?
It’s a pretty common experience that staying in touch with distant friends is difficult, whether they are “web friends” or not, and even if you share a lot of common perspectives. Psychologists at the University of Leipzig report that (fresh) students, that got randomly seated for their first lesson, were more likely to be friends a year later when they sat next to each other back then (via Die Zeit).
Some basic requirements provided, physical proximity is the best predictor for actual friendships. Intrestingly enough, another group around Pentland, Eagle, et al. conducted a huge empirical research using mobile phone data and found out that the number of meetings in person and phone calls are very good indicators for friendship. While this behaviour might be considered as intentional, the new findings imply that proximity “causes” friendship even unintented!
On the one hand, we could conclude that our increasingly “remoted” social life still faces difficulties that we can’t overcome: Relationships need face to face meetings.
On the other hand, we could also think about whether this finding applies to the online world in a more abstract way: It might be more likely to stumble upon possible friends than actually finding them intentionally (i.e. using sophisticated search methods)–quite an argument for associative browsing support.
The paper Larissa and me wrote a couple of months ago got finally accepted at the NGMAST conference in Wales this September! This is pretty exciting news, it’s my/our first step into the serious (official?) world of science.
The full title reads Social Button – Mobile Technology Supporting Social Interaction.
Our project is about a small wearable display with a pin, that can be attached to your clothes. It gets your address book from your mobile phone and checks for matching entries on other SocialButtons that might be in the area. The Buttons indicate a match by displaying each participants personal symbol – a twist, that makes it much easier to find others and protect your privacy at the same time. Larissa’s animation explanes it far better:
So we went to the wonderful city of Cardiff (Wales, UK) some weeks ago to present our work. We got very encouraging feedback and some helpful critique there , and had some interesting face-to-face talks in the City Hall where conference took place. (Our slides come in at 8MB)
NGMAST was the first conference on “Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services, and Technologies”, so it was rather tiny (compared to the very well known ones), but also quite personal, with a very warm chair, and easy to get in contact with the other participants.
With this event it became clear that our idea is promising yet only partially finished – so we are open for your comments!
(There is also a corresponding workspace at our University’s site for internal communication, incom)
When we want to get to know another person, we have to share some of our personal or private opinions and feelings. Some people are more afraid of doing so — they are afraid of being vulnerable — and that’s what we refer to as shy, more or less. In a recent discussion about Experience Design, we came across the Social Button again: Primarily it is intended to facilitate exactly these initial steps towards an interpersonal relation. The button reveals matching personal criteria (common friends, e.g.) by displaying some meaningful graphics on the Social Button of the corresponding person. It is not only exposing private data (to certain extent) but uses another person as “billboard” — two factors that might make us feel uneasy in a similiar way than the usual face-to-face situation but initiated by technology.
It seems as we have to trade in control for getting to know others more easily. It was one of our goals to reduce the reasons for these privacy concerns as far as possible by implementing a symbol decoding on a subjective basis.
After some days of intense writing mostly done by Larissa, our first paper in our lives ever has been submitted! Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Abstract
We are exploring the use of small displays as an instrument to enhance social communication. Our focus is on encouraging communication between strangers by revealing the existence of common friends. In the following we present the concept of the SocialButton, a wearable mobile device which displays aspects of friend-of-a-friend networks. A group study has provided us with an initial understanding regarding the potential of the SocialButton to influence our social environment.
More backgrounds on the paper can be found in the archive and on Larissa’s blog, of course.
For the further development of our Social Display prototype we were in need for a transceiver, a display and some computing power. All of this can be found nicly bundled into a state-of-the-art mobile phone. I had heard of a mobile version of processing and after a quick view (when I found a cool example-code for some bluetooth-tricks by Francis Li), we decided to give it a try. …
Just for the record: This code will drive our arduino boards (two of them and yes! they are connected AND talking!).
It took Larissa and me quite some time and a lot more nerves. And Tomek, too! He spent hours with us on ICQ altruisticly, even got his two Arduinos out of the box and gave us the right hints finally – by remote!
So we learnt a lot. Most important: With two communicating Boards, never forget to connect the grounds. Always remember.
Some days ago I had the pleasure to celebrate my friend Remmelt’s birthday with him. I met some interesting people there and I also got to know the Sputnik that Sascha brought from this(last) year’s 23C3:
It’s an RFID transponder, i.e. it will work both as a sender and receiver, has a touch sensor already implemented and a tiny but programmable microcontroler onboard. So it looks like the perfect solution – unfortunately programming it is not within my range, at least for this moment (RS232 serial protocol and unfamiliar MicroChip PIC16F684 microcontroller) . Let’s see what ideas we will develop to build our prototypes…
There are a couple of new video prototypes available that show various devices and applications. All of them are looking for friends that you share with people around you.
Larissa has three new videos about concepts of social mobile devices, three more can be found directly here!
Waiting for the bus is quite a boring task, especially in winter. Some entertainment is usually highly apreciated, even more when there seems to be a personal link with common friends. The person next to me will no longer be a stranger but a friend of a friend.
Some time ago Berlin’s UDK had the luck to award Sasha Pohflepp with his diploma degree in Visual Communication for his brilliant work called Blinks&Buttons. Although I knew his work for some time my research on social interaction for a mobile world gave me reason to read it in more detail. It triggerd some thoughts on public, community, and private use of media. …
I just returned from a great play with the title MOBIL at the Hans-Otto-Theater Potsdam about our mobile life and mobile devices. Almost all dialogues had been replaced by talks on the phone or even messages left on mailboxes. That revealed a society permanently on the move, compensating that lack of physical proximity by an excess in mobile communication. A vivid and intense performance of the actors gave these topics a touching expression. …
