#10 Connecting with People

For our final crit we decided to present multiple ideas that could potentially be used to spark connection and contact.

Dream Walk:

Meghana’s idea of the dream walk allowed people to be whatever they wanted to be. The cultural probes for this project would be projectors that would project different characters on people’s faces and will be installed in various parts of the city. Here the person would be able to choose an avatar and turn into that character. For example he could choose to be a Santa Claus (to spread happiness) or Batman to feel empowered. This led to the idea of the dream walk where buildings would have smart mirrors and they would be able to see their avatar while walking past them.

Cultural probes:

Virtual Dog:

The virtual dog idea came about when John was observing people in public spaces. He was with his dog and people kept on coming up to him and asking what breed it was. This made him realize that dogs are a great way to spark conversation but not everyone has them for many reasons and so he had this idea of having a virtual dog. After Alex shared the article concerning holograms, this was changed to having holographic pets instead which you could interact with. Since he was having a hard time creating an image that could represent his idea, I offered to help.

Virtual Pet:

While thinking of ways to improve social interactions through different mediums I realised that sometimes that sense of a glance or just an eye contact is almost enough to feel like you’ve connected with someone. The important thing that I realised while doing this project was that I went a little too far when trying to figure out ways to improve social connections.

Sometimes just saying hi to a person while you’re walking in a park would be enough to start a conversation. I decided to take John’s idea of the virtual pet a step further by coming up with a toy game that would encourage such actions. Sometimes having a real pet is difficult. Maybe your apartment complex is strict or your loved ones are allergic. In order to keep your pet alive in the game the user will have to do at least one good deed a day along with cleaning and taking care of it. Once you do a good deed (e.g., telling someone they look beautiful or have a nice day ahead), you add that to your game which will act as a feed for your pet to keep it alive. Your pet keeps growing as you keep feeding it with your good deeds. Sometimes even the smallest of gestures can make somebody's day. This could possibly act as a motivator for users to good deeds. Since the game doesn’t have specific actions the user will have a freehand to any good deed that they feel comfortable with like for example if they don’t like communicating with strangers they could do something as little as throwing the trash in the bin. This game will act as an instant acknowledgment for the user and seeing their pet alive and happy would encourage them to do more.

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