THEELECTRONICLENS

MIT Design Lab

MIT mobile experience lab

RETHINKING THE PEDESTRIAN EXPERIENCE

A project of the MIT mobile experience lab at MIT Design Laboratory.

blog, wiki-platform, charrette, multidisciplinarity, techno-logy resources, prototype fab-rication shops, network, userexperience, affiliated research groups, academic guidance, international activities, ethno-graphies, mobile devices

How can governments and civic institutions become more responsive and offer better services to urban citizens and visitors through use of mobile, wireless, location aware techonologies?

research focus

Mobile devices can function as an „electronic lens“, eLens; citizens use it to investigate and explore the urban environment. Imagine you simply point your mobile phone at a building or landmark in order to access historical and cultural infor-mation. eLens users can post messages in physical locations, tag buildings and places, create social networks based on common

interests and social empathy, and share information, opinions, experien-ces, passions. eLens interaction enriches the physical environment; formal and institutional information are combined with informal com-munication and personal annotations. Local communities post their experiences in the physical environ-ments and create affinity based social networks. The city as “Wikicity”.

Concept, design, implementation, testing

MIT Design Lab

MIT mobile experience lab

Concept, design, implementation, testing

In collaboration with the Government of Catalunia, the Manresa city government and the kind support of the Lacetania school in Manresa, the electronic Lens project has been designed and implemented for a test in May 2006.

A first workshop helped to layout a concept and develop parts of the technologies that were used.

A second workshop with a dedicated core team led to the development and the prototype implementation.

Lowtech stickers function as visual tags. Each sticker is unique and geographically situated.

With your camera phone and the eLens software, you can recognize each specific tag by „scanning“ it, and you may leave or retrieve information – for example voice messages, photos, music or movies.

The information is stored in a databa-se and can be accessed by another user when scanning this specific tag.

Databases can be connected to governmental databases for example or authors can feed the databases to address specific user groups, such as tourists, doctors, joggers, teachers, friends, family, ….

“Take a wireless device with a bit of location- and direction awareness and use it to unlock the secrets of the city.“

On-the-spot contextual information about attractions and resources of a city.

Concept Design MIT workshop fall 2005

In a first design workshop we deve-loped ideas and a concepts how to design an electronic lens. It should provide pedestrians with immediate, on-the-spot, geogra-phically and temporarily contextuali-zed information about the attractions and resources that a city offers.

A trip to Barcelona with the group allowed to do a workshop with the Government of Catalonia, ethno-graphies as well as on site research about culture, citizens needs and opportunities.

1

MIT workshop spring 2006

With a small core group of collabora-ting students from different back-grounds in disciplines such as media arts and sciences, software engine-ering, cognitive science, computer science, information design, architec-ture and urban planning, the eLens was developed as a prototype.

During a one-week workshop in Manresa, the tool was tested with a group of Spanish high-school students that explored their city while using eLens for personal networking as well as an alternative way of learning.

Prototype Test 2

Field trial in Manresa, Spain, spring 2006.

The Electronic Lens project was deployed and tested in Manrasa, Spain in spring 2006. The primary goal was to redesign the three tourist routes in Manresa. The secondary goal was to test explore contextuali-zed learning with mobile devices.A group of students were given an eLens each for five days.

The idea for eLens was to act as tool for learning through location based discussion. In small groups the students placed tags on historical buildings of different époques by following three architectural routes: Baroque, Medieval and Modernist.The first task was to tag buildings creating a new map of the city. The second task to leave formal mes-sages about history, architecture and the city.

Students redesigned the tourist routes with subjective content, posting personal thoughts, music, and participating in different social networks.Users added experiential and informal content to the existing formal information provided by institutions.

Place a tag, scan it, name it, leave a message and add categories.

Define your social groups, share information, participate in asyn-chronous location based discussion forums and learn about places and people.

Experience location based networking,in-situ learning and new forms of communication, and explore the city and its activities.

Add and retrieve content.

Voice messages, images, text, songs or movies.

“… elens can be a great forum that can stay at one place for years and leave a great history… It is also great as a tool to use for collaborative learning – the tag could basically incorporate the content of a whole book.“ Marc, Lacetania School, Manresa, Spain

“… elens would be great when travelling. You can get information the spot wherever you are. Also, you can get insider infor-mation with eLens and get to know the opinion of other people.“Tania, Lacetania School, Manresa, Spain

http://mobile.mit.edu/elens

Credits

Class instructors

William J. MitchellFederico Casalegno

Technical development team

Aaron Zinman, Enrico Constanza, Jie-Eun Hwang, Jae-woo Chung, Jonathan Gips, Miguel Menchu, Mirja Leinss, Sajid Sadi, Tad Hirsch

Semester I participants

Allison Novak, Anne Dodge, Ommed Sathe, Raoul David Poblano, Stephanie Groll, Vanessa Bertozzi, Wooyoung Kimm

Thanks to our partners

Generalitat de Catalunya, SpainCiscoMotorolaTelefonica

Contact

Federico CasalegnoMIT Design LaboratoryMIT mobile experience lab

238 Main Street, E48-31902142 Cambridge, MA, USAemail federico@media.mit.edu

The MIT mobile experience lab takes a multidiscipli-

nary approach at understanding people’s experience

using wireless communication technologies, while

exploring how mobile media impact societies, commu-

nities and spaces. http://mobile.mit.edu