Jared Braiterman (our Guest in Navigating EMS) and Wendy Owen of Giant Ant offer us a set of "heuristics" (rules of thumb or design qualities) for designing mobile interactions in ways that place context at the center of their design approach.
Read their paper: "Design Sketch: The Context of Mobile Interaction."
Use Giant Ant’s heuristics to generate a design idea for successful mobile interactions. Your idea for better mobile interactions could suggest a new mobile phone feature, use, function, skin, or convergence. In 250 words, describe your new idea and illustrate it with a photo, drawing, or diagram. Explain how using Giant Ant’s heuristics guided your design process.
credit: Giant Ant
Take inspiration from
from keitai culture and observe the creative mobile culture surrounding you. Practice sociological observation.
-Document how someone (maybe yourself) has personalized their mobile.
-Interview your subject about how this personalization has changed their usage: What was the motivation for their creative addition/alteration? Has it changed how they interact and feel about their device? Did they use commercial sources or did they DIY their phone with personal artistry?
Take a few moments to learn more about options that currently exist in the mobile decor market: skins,phone tattoos, & bling kits are just a few.
Check-out this article and images from Wired for inspiration.
credit: PANA
Years ago, NASA commissioned a disc that was sent into deep space with the hope that some distant civilization might recover the artifact, figure out how to access the information within it, and hence be intoduced to humankind. The designers of this time capsule faced the challenge of recording images that would represent our species.
This project is along the same lines, only you will be using your cell phone to represent your life – three days of it. The broad goal is to capture and collect, even the small moments, that make your life yours and essentially meaningful.
Time Capsule by EMS student Sean-Michael Aaron
Requirements:
Time:
Three days, working sporadically. Let us recommend that you start this project without thinking too much about what will emerge. Commit yourself to taking as many shots as you can in the 24 hour period. We recommend these not be consecutive days. You should spend time downloading and reviewing images of one day before you start a new day of documentation.
Gear:
Digital camera built into a cell phone. Unless you have the very latest of the up scale models, your camera will have a fixed lens and it will be relative low resolution. If you have not used your camera much, we suggest you give yourself a warm up day. The images will end up on your computer, where you can label and edit them.
Outcome:
You will decide what to make of your time capsule only after you have completed all the shooting. The final “product” can take a number of different forms from simple prints stored in a cookie tin or box to a powerpoint presentation you put on a hard disc and save for your grandchildren. You might find you want to make a collage of select images. You might process a single image or a small set of images, creating high quality color print outs suitable for framing and mounting. Or for turning into screen wallpaper or a huge poster. Save discovering an outcome for last.
Workflow:
1. Testing: try out your mobile phone’s camera and how to download or send the images to your computer. Research the file format used by your camera. Research how to transfer it into a jpg.
2. Day One: If you have a strategy in mind, go with it. But perhaps it will be helpful to use this checklist as a way of giving yourself some specific objectives. We recommend coming up with a list or plan of some kind the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning.
3. Review. Look at your pictures. Label them. Don’t throw away anything. At least not yet. Plan for the next day’s shoot. This might be a good time to check out the sites listed below.
4. Day Two & Review. Maybe not so much of a review. Look for something that you want to follow-up on. It could be a kind of shot or a time of shooting. It could be anything. Follow your interest but don’t necessarily over analyze it.
5. Day Three This is your last day to shoot. You might want to revisit locations or circumstances that have been fruitful in days 1 or 2. Maybe you’ve gotten past a bunch of obligatory stuff and can now find something totally new to be shooting. If you can, shoot more pix on day 3 than on the other days.
6. Build your Time Capsule. You are free to choose any outcome you want as long as there is a tangible (not virtual) artifact. Your time capsule can include just one shot or dozens of shots. Address your time capsule to someone and take time to compose a 300 word note. Put down a date in the future for opening the time capsule. The recipient could be you in 15 years. Seal your time capsule within its outputted form. Wrap it so you cannot even see the container. Store the object somewhere safe.
7. Erase: Last but perhaps most important of all, erase all the images from your hard drive.
HELPFUL ARTICLES
MSNBC America 24/7
This article describes project and subsequent book entitled America 24/7 by Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen. They iinvited anyone in America with a digital camera to submit photographs that depict their lives. They received over 1 million submissions from amateur photographers to Pulitzer Prize winners.
Laurelines Blog
This blog outlines the author's plan to create a sketchbook every month for the year 2007. Topics for her sketchbooks include: interiors, food and dining, trees, exteriors, the woods, machines/ mechanisms, etc.
BBC News/ In Pictures Series
Everyday news.bbc.co.uk posts photographic submissions from all over the world.
Use Adobe Illustrator to turn a head shot of yourself into a tiny web graphic that will be perfect for Mobiles or IM’ing icons.
Download your step by step guide: 
Alter Ego
credit: stephen nguyen
“I’m my own walk man, chicka-boom chika boom”
The preceding is a line from a delightful piece of musical lunacy created by the one and only Bobby McFerrin. If you are unfamiliar with his work take a listen. You’ll find it's no exaggeration to label this guy as a “one and only.”
The general idea is to create three distinctive ring tones that are all made from melody and rhythm that you create yourself, using voice, clapping and simple tapping/drumming on ordinary surfaces. These ring tones (a repeating track of approximately 15 sec) will built in Garage Band (a tool in the Apple iLife Suite.) One ring will be your “general” ring for incoming calls. One will be a designated rings assigned to those very few special persons whose calls you always accept (for me it is my Wife and my kids). Make a third ring tone and assign it as you wish.
Requirements:
Time: Probably a day to explore and do tests. Two or three days of production.
G
ear: you will need a microphone you can hook into your computer. This project is “studio” centered in that you can perform all the music and rhythmic tracks yourself in the quiet of your home.
Workflow:
1. Figure out how to place a ring tone on your cell phone. Do you have the functionality? Can you locate technical information and support? If not, bail right now.
2. Explore using improvised, self-manufactured sounds in making interesting tracks via Garage Band. Learn your loops. Test your recording. Practice your performance.
3. Visit CNET's "DIY: Ring Bling." Read Sasha Frere-Jones: "Ring My Bell: The expensive pleasures of the ringtone" in The New Yorker. Learn about the conventions, structure, history and aesthetics of ring tones.
4. Record three different tracks, as suggested above. Import them into your phone.
credit: google
Google is offering a $25,000 award and funding for the most promising new application s for Mobiles.
Here is there challenge:
"Cool apps that surprise and delight mobile users, built by developers like you, will be a huge part of the Android vision. To support you in your efforts, Google has launched the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in awards -- no strings attached -- for great mobile apps built on the Android platform.
How It WorksThe award money will be distributed equally between two Android Developer Challenges:
* Android Developer Challenge I: We will accept submissions from January 2 through March 3, 2008
* Android Developer Challenge II: This part will launch after the first handsets built on the platform become available in the second half of 2008In the Android Developer Challenge I, the 50 most promising entries received by March 3 will each receive a $25,000 award to fund further development. Those selected will then be eligible for even greater recognition via ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards.
Build Your Favorite Mobile ApplicationWe welcome all types of applications but are looking to reward innovative, useful apps that make use of Android's capabilities to deliver a better mobile experience. Here are some suggested areas of focus to get you started:
* Social networking
* Media consumption, management, editing, or sharing, e.g., photos
* Productivity and collaboration such as email, IM, calendar, etc.
* Gaming
* News and information
* Rethinking of traditional user interfaces
* Use of mash-up functionality
* Use of location-based services
* Humanitarian benefits
* Applications in service of global economic development
* Whatever you're excited about!"