The week is finally over and my student’s work was great! I invited them to post all of their service ideas online and will be updating this post with the links as time goes by. They also conducted a short interview, nothing none of you don’t already know. We didn’t really get to the core ideas about interaction design which some of the other professors talked about. Pity.
1. SNAILMAIL
Jan, Simon and Andy thought about how to bridge the digital divide and allow metaphors to converge. SnailMail is a service that allows you to send an email to an elderly person even if they don’t have an email address. That email would be printed out and sent via the postal service to that person. In return they could write a regular letter and send it through regular mail but with special envelopes provided by the service. In time, the elderly person would understand the concept of using email and eventually transition out of the service.
2. MR SHOP4U
Designed by Dries, Ellent and Maxime, this service is quite complex but holds a lot of potential in my opinion. Mr Shop4u is a service that aims to piggyback on local services to reduce the amount of packaging of frehs goods at the source. A convenient and online virtual shopping experience allows you to pick your goods and then get them delivered by local bikers that give you boxes you can then hand back to the service at your next delivery. Very smart.
3. Mod, this service by Carmen, Klaas, Wouter and Nils caters to people who want to discover new places to hang out in. Depending on their mood, calculated by a bracelet the service provides, you would be suggested a location to spend and evening. the bracelet also helps you locate that place by indicating which direction to walk in, since the last thing you want to do is pull out a map late at night. Then you can feedback to the system which takes that information into consideration when picking the next place or for other users in general, recording what the good nights are and the less interesting night are within a same location.
4. Braceme is a service idea from Bert, Tom and Eva Teresa that explores the different ways in which we can connect while in urban environments. You would go buy a Braceme bracelet and fill in a survey to highlight some caracter traits, likes and dislikes. This information would be implanted in this bracelet that would respond quite visually to whether anyone in your direct environment has more or less things in common with you. This bracelet is coupled to a mobile application that allows you to tweak the visual notifications you would get on your bracelet and also allow you to send your picture to the service who relays it to that person to establish a meeting.