Project evolution

Okay, as you all probably know we named our project the Facecube. I will now quickly take you through the thoughts and discussions that led us to the FC.

After the weekend we sat down and discussed how we could make the FC something you want to carry around and tried to figure out what you really would want to do with a portable cube. The whole “Social communication support” felt a bit meaningless. Would people actually want to use the cube like that? We pretty much all agreed on that there should be some kind of docking station on bar tables, where you can dock your cube and display pictures projected on the table. The table would identify the cube by RFID and then project the pictures stored in the cube. That was one main function that we all agreed on, but we couldn’t decide how the cube was going to be used when the user was just carrying it around. We talked about some sort of predefined color system for communication with other cube users but we still wanted every user to be able to make their own cube personal by defining their own color system and experiment with the looks of the cube. Another idea was to make it possible to report where you are or what you’re doing to your friends via some web application, like Facebook or msn.

Eventually, after talking to the dude from Physical Interaction Lab (sorry, I don’t remember his name), we realized that the most exciting function for the cube would be the ability to communicate with the web. The site we decided to use is Facebook. There you can update your status and in that way give out your location or just update how you’re feeling at the moment. The cube suddenly became a kind of portable micro blogging tool. Another function that we came up with after deciding to make a connection with Facebook was friends making with just putting to cubes together. The idea is that if you meet a new friend when you’re out you can easily become friends on Facebook and stay in touch. A Facecube user will be able to update their status on Facebook by simply pressing down one of the sides on their own cube. The user will decide what activity, mood, location or anything actually each side of the cube will represent by defining the sides on their Facebook-page. Then, when pressing down one side their status on Facebook will be updated with the activity they have chosen. The user also will be able to store one picture on each side of the cube that will be displayed when using a docking station.

So our three main functions for the Facecube are:
· Micro blogging
· Friends making
· Pictures