(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available.)

Ambient social tv: drawing people into a shared experience [abstract]
Authors: Gunnar Harboe, Crysta J. Metcalf, Frank Bentley, Joe Tullio, Noel Massey and Guy Romano (Motorola Labs)
Abstract: We examine how ambient displays can augment social television. Social TV 2 is an interactive television solution that incorporates two ambient displays to convey to participants an aggregate view of their friends’ current TV-watching status. Social TV 2 also allows users to see which television shows friends and family are watching and send lightweight messages from within the TV-viewing experience. Through a two-week field study we found the ambient displays to be an integral part of the experience. We present the results of our field study with a discussion of the implications for future social systems in the home.

Results from deploying a participation incentive mechanism within the enterprise [abstract]
Authors: Rosta Farzan (University of Pittsburgh), Joan M. DiMicco (IBM, Cambridge), David R. Millen (IBM, Cambridge), Casey Dugan (IBM, Cambridge), Werner Geyer (IBM, Cambridge) and Elizabeth A. Brownholtz (IBM, Cambridge)
Abstract: Success and sustainability of social networking sites is highly dependent on user participation. To encourage contribution to an opt-in social networking site designed for employees, we have designed and implemented a feature that rewards contribution with points. In our evaluation of the impact of the system, we found that employees are initially motivated to add more content to the site. This paper presents the analysis and design of the point system, the results of our experiment, and our insights regarding future directions derived from our post-experiment user interviews.

Exploring the role of the reader in the activity of blogging [abstract]
Authors: Eric Baumer, Mark Sueyoshi and Bill Tomlinson (UC Irvine)
Abstract: Within the last decade, blogs have become an important element of popular culture, mass media, and the daily lives of countless Internet users. Despite the medium’s interactive nature, most research on blogs focuses on either the blog itself or the blogger, rarely if at all focusing on the reader’s impact. In order to gain a better understanding of the social practice of blogging, we must take into account the role, contributions, and significance of the reader. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study of blog readers, including common blog reading practices, some of the dimensions along which reading practices vary, relationships between identity presentation and perception, the interpretation of temporality, and the ways in which readers feel that they are a part of the blogs they read. It also describes similarities to, and discrepancies with, previous work, and suggests a number of directions and implications for future work on blogging.

The network in the garden: an empirical analysis of social media in rural life [abstract]
Authors: Eric Gilbert, Karrie Karahalios and Christian Sandvig (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Abstract: History repeatedly demonstrates that rural communities have unique technological needs. Yet, we know little about how rural communities use modern technologies, so we lack knowledge on how to design for them. To address this gap, our empirical paper investigates behavioral differences between more than 3,000 rural and urban social media users. Using a dataset collected from a broadly popular social network site, we analyze users’ profiles, 340,000 online friendships and 200,000 interpersonal messages. Using social capital theory, we predict differences between rural and urban users and find strong evidence supporting our hypotheses. Namely, rural people articulate far fewer friends online, and those friends live much closer to home. Our results also indicate that the groups have substantially different gender distributions and use privacy features differently. We conclude by discussing design implications drawn from our findings; most importantly, designers should reconsider the binary friend-or-not model to allow for incremental trust-building.

Healthcare in everyday life: designing healthcare services for daily life [abstract]
Authors: Stinne Aaløkke Ballegaard, Thomas Riisgaard Hansen and Morten Kyng (University of Aarhus)
Abstract: Today the design of most healthcare technology is driven by the considerations of healthcare professionals and technology companies. This has several benefits, but we argue that there is a need for a supplementary design approach on the basis the citizen and his or her everyday life. An approach where the main focus is to develop healthcare technology that fits the routines of daily life and thus allows the citizens to continue with the activities they like and have grown used to — also with an aging body or when managing a chronic condition. Thus, with this approach it is not just a matter of fixing a health condition, more importantly is the matter of sustaining everyday life as a whole. This argument is a result from our work — using participatory design methods — on the development of supportive healthcare technology for elderly people and for diabetic, pregnant women.

International ethnographic observation of social networking sites [abstract]
Authors: Christopher N. Chapman (Microsoft Corporation) and Michal Lahav (Sakson & Taylor Consulting)
Abstract: Current research on social networking largely covers US providers. To investigate broader trends, we examine cross-cultural differences in the usage patterns of social networking services with observation and ethnographic interviews in multiple cultures. This appears to be the first systematic investigation of social networking behavior across multiple cultures. We report here on the first four locations with observation and interviews of 36 respondents, 8-10 in each of the US, France, China, and South Korea. The results show three dimensions of cultural difference for typical social networking behaviors: the users’ goals, typical pattern of self expression, and common interaction behaviors. These differences exemplify a developmental path of interest in social networking and the gradual integration of social networking behavior into more general communications behaviors. Future work in other cultures and with additional methods will evaluate the hypotheses presented here.

Mark Ury, chief experience architect for Blast Radius, was there and wrote about it on his blog “The Restless Mind”:

“His thesis is that in order to grapple with a particularly stressful stretch of time, society engages in some mind-numbing activity that, by consequence, creates a cognitive surplus. Eventually, this surplus overflows and new forms of value are created. He cites post-industrial revolution Londoners blanking out with gin, only to then build many of the modern institutions we cherish today, and post-WWII Americans sitting slack-jawed watching I Love Lucy and Gilligan’s Island, but now using the Internet to produce Wikipedia and, to a lesser order, lolcats.” […]

“What struck me as intriguing in all this wasn’t our cognitive surplus, though. It’s our surplus of interaction.” […]

“Interaction surplus, though, is new. From RSS to email, flickr to FunWalls, posts to pingbacks—we’ve never before had to deal with an abundance of two-way interaction. And unlike the subtle effect of compound interest, hooking more people up to the grid creates a personalized form of Metcalfe’s law, a signal to noise ratio that is overwhelming and, over time, numbing. Watching “connected consumers” tweet, IM, tag, upload, download and go viral is not much different than a Saturday night rave: a blur of consciousness, ephemera, and not a little dizziness.”

Watch presentation

Speakers included Gillian Crampton Smith, Anthony Dunne, Tim Edler, Frank Jacob, Gesche Joost, Bernard Kerr, Patrick Kochlik, Kristjan Kristjansson, Bill Moggridge, Dennis Paul, Mike Richter and Bruce Sterling.

The videos are now online.

(via Bruce Sterling)

While most people think journalism is important to the quality of life, 64 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities, a We Media/Zogby Interactive online poll showed.

Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to the survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago. Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers.

But aren’t those the results you would expect when doing an online poll?

- Read full story
- Read Zogby International press release | Read iFocos press release

Three of the series are by Adam Curtis, a brilliant British television documentary maker who works for BBC Current Affairs. He is noted for making programmes which express a clear (and sometimes controversial) opinion about their subject, and for narrating the programmes himself.

The Century of the Self consists of four one-hour films examining “how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” It tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests? [Google Video]

The Power of Nightmares consists of three one-hour films that explore how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. The films compare the rise of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and noting strong similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies. [Google Video]

The Trap also consists of three, one-hour programmes which explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically “how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom.” [Google Video]

The two other programmes are narrated by Michio Kaku, an American theoretical physicist, specialising in string field theory, and futurist.

Visions of the Future is a three-part BBC series, exploring the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. The first part is dedicated to the intelligence revolution, the second to the biotech revolution, and the third to the quantum revolution. [Google Video]

2057 is the only non-BBC programme. It is made by Discovery Channel and attempts to predict what the world will be like in 50 years based on current trends. The show takes the form of a docu-drama with three separate episodes, each having informative stories ingrained into the plot. [Google Video]

Here is the announcement by Scott Delman, ACM Group Publisher:

ACM is pleased to announce a new innovation for subscribers to interactions, the leading magazine publication for the Human Computer Interactions community. As from the January-February 2008 issue, ACM will be offering a digital edition of each issue of the magazine as an added benefit to subscribers. This new offering is provided in addition to the current print edition of the magazine and articles posted in the ACM Digital Library. The magazine’s new digital edition will serve as an additional service that will enable members to view a true digital representation of the entire print magazine from cover to cover in an easy to use digital format.

Digital editions are becoming increasingly available because they provide the reader with increased usability of digital content, including enhanced navigation, search, linking, and browsing features. Our digital editions will give readers the feel of thumbing through the pages of interactions, as well as the ability to zoom in on particular paragraphs, instantly check particular references or advertisements, or search an issue for particular content markers, and then store these editions on their PC or laptop for long term archiving or sharing of interesting articles with friends and colleagues.

Specific features available in the digital edition of interactions include the ability to:

• page through articles online or download the issue to your computer
• click on links for direct access to online source materials, advertiser web sites, or author e-mail addresses
• conduct keyword searches of the current issue or all issues in the digital archive
• print articles or forward them to colleagues
• use digital editions without the need to download plug-ins

Although the above announcement message is aimed at subscribers only, the online version of the January-February edition of the magazine is really available to all - and I sincerely hope it is not a one off thing. Communications, the ACM flagship publication on computing research, is also going online (press release).

Wow.

It looks, feels, and reads exactly like a magazine for our profession should be. Why did no one think of this before? It contains a lot of in-depth articles by people I respect or others I am curious about. It is the ideal magazine to take with you and read on the road or on a couch.

Another first impression is that Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko, the editors-in-chief, have gone out of their way to transcend an American perspective on the profession: from the British Elizabeth Churchill, to the Austrian Telecommunications Research Center, and from Stefana Broadbent and Valerie Bauwens of Swisscom Innovations, to South African Gary Marsden and the Beijing-based Gabriel White. I applaud this commitment very much, especially since many USA-based blogs and publications do not take this global view, or assume - wrongly - that the American view equals the global view.

So bravo to the two editors in chief for the direction taken, and bravo to ACM, the publishers, of providing them with this opportunity.

The ACM advertising department has a golden opportunity now: the new “Interactions” approach is out there, but the advertising hasn’t caught up. It’s still very much old style. Some fresh and creative approaches there could make Interactions Magazine a really sustainable publication.

Once I have finished reading the whole magazine, I will definitely write something more in-depth. Meanwhile, Richard and Jon, keep on going in this direction. I hope ACM will take the logical next step: making the articles available online. I am also curious to hear where ACM (an abbreviation which stands for Association for Computing Machinery, a rather awkward name in this day and age) as an organisation wants to go with this, and how it wants to position itself in the new UX landscape. The magazine is silent on that topic. Perhaps ACM’s executive editor or group publisher can be prodded for an article on this in the March-April edition or on the website.

In any case, I strongly suggest the readers of this blog to subscribe to the magazine, if you haven’t already done so. It’s only 50 USD.

PS. In Boston - Next week my partner Michele Visciola and I (Mark Vanderbeeken) will be in Boston for a client meeting. We will arrive on the 23rd and leave on the 27th. If readers of this blog are in Boston then, it would be nice to meet. Please contact us at info at experientia dot com.

“The center’s 18-page study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, posits that the aggressive efforts by companies like Viacom and NBC Universal to battle infringement fails to make the distinction between what’s legal and what’s not. Apart from potentially banishing much user-gen video from major sites like MySpace and YouTube, the current climate promotes “a deformed and truncated notion” of the rights of amateur videographers.”

Although the article and report are both valid, and the American University is a respected private United Methodist-affiliated institution in Washington, DC, I find it disturbing that The New York Times is now publishing content where the boundaries between editorial and advertising are starting to blur.

The “article” is in fact not written by the New York Times, although it is listed in the technology section as editorial content, but by someone who works for “PaidContent.org”, which is a publication of the ContentNext Media network. In fact, a copy of the article can be found on the PaidContent.org website.

Read full story

“Architecture and design, says my friend Jeffrey Huang (photo), are becoming the interface between physical and virtual lives. And that’s his field of study: how can constructs (buildings, cities and landscapes) incorporate digital communication systems? What are the effects of digitization on the typologies of cities today?

Last week, professor Huang — who among other things was instrumental in creating the Swiss House in Boston, now called Swissnex — gave his inaugural lesson at EPFL, the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne, where he runs the Media and Design Lab (he was previously at the Harvard School of Design). Here my running notes.”

Read full story

“It was a no-brainer to move to a layout that would be cleaner, more open and more easily readable. There was also a desire to get away from the tired and monotonous blue base colour of the original page.

From a conceptual point of view, the widgetization adopted by Facebook, iGoogle and netvibes weighed strongly on our initial thinking. We wanted to build the foundation and DNA of the new site in line with the ongoing trend and evolution of the Internet towards dynamically generated and syndicable content through technologies like RSS, atom and xml. This trend essentially abstracts the content from its presentation and distribution, atomizing content into a feed-based universe. Browsers, devices, etc therefore become lenses through which this content can be collected, tailored and consumed by the audience.

This concept formed one of the most important underlying design and strategic elements of the new homepage. The approach has the added benefit of making content more accessible, usable, and more efficient to modify for consumption across a wider array of networks and devices.

- Read full story
- Read commentary

His reflection is all about the currently very active field of presence research, though strangely he doesn’t use that word. I very much like the challenges he posts at the end:

“Over the past few decades many researchers have built devices that use light, color, sound, or motion to convey information about people, activities, and places. These devices let people see information at a glance, without the need to go to another device or navigate an interface. Particularly interesting to me has always been how our environments can keep us more aware of those that we care about and help strengthen social bonds. […]

In our research, we’ve been investigating how these sorts of displays can help people learn more about the lives of others in their close social networks. We’ve found that these devices can draw people into richer types of social media experiences by conveying social information in the home on an always-on device and can be frequently observed without any additional effort. This powerful new way to get data fits nicely into people’s routines and helps them be aware of their social network without the need to do go out of their way to check a web site or computer application to receive social information.

The power in this class of devices is in delivering information about others who are important in our lives in a way that reminds us of these people and their activities as we go about our lives. While from time to time it might be nice to see the weather or another information channel, the frequently changing information about the people in our social circle allows us to become more aware of their behaviors and have social experiences that would otherwise not occur. These are the exciting aspects of ambient devices that were not possible with existing computer and television-based interfaces. As we all continue to lead increasingly busy lives, the ability to tie into the patterns of others can help us stay social and connected.

There are two big challenges in this space from a research perspective. The first is to create displays that are truly ambient and don’t interfere with the home environment. We want to ensure that we can provide useful information without distracting people from their home lives. The second challenge is all about finding the most useful information sources for these displays. Obviously, the two are closely tied together and are a big part of our research into ambient communications. We have a few educated guesses that we’re currently testing and hopefully will have some data to report at a conference next year.”

Read full story

Now they have repeated their method to assess the UX consciousness of mainstream business publications.

So, what was the degree of “UX consciousness” among business publications?

• The Harvard Business Review is most interested in knowledge management and information management
• The Economist is quite focused—at the expense of all other UX topics—on branding
• Business Week seems to have the most balanced coverage, with six terms accounting for at least 5% of the results each (branding, content management, industrial design, information management, knowledge management, and user experience)
• Fast Company is the leader in industrial design focus and in branding, trailing only The Economist in that category
• Business 2.0 seems to lead in many areas that have started to gather attention relatively recently: experience design, information design, interaction design, interface design, search analytics, technical communication, usability engineering, and user experience (9.9%). It’s also the most balanced in its coverage, after Business Week.
• Inc. has a strong information focus: content management and knowledge management are by far its largest categories.
• Entrepreneur focuses exceptionally on graphic design and ergonomics
• Strategy + Business hewed most closely to the overall averages, showing stronger focus on branding and weaker on content management.

Full results

The revamp was pretty far reaching - the team took a user-centred approach, with extensive usability testing and planning, and found new ways to think about marketing books via the site.

The group is also set to launch new sites to increase its engagement with customers - one is a youth-oriented site called spinebreakers.co.uk, which is employing teenagers in its development.

E-Consultancy, the British online publisher, has posted an interview with Penguin and DK’s online development manager Jeanette Angell, who speaks about the reasons behind the project and the techniques it used.

Read interview

The 330-page report takes a comprehensive look at the way Britons use new and old media and reveals a nation in love with its media, gadgets and hi-tech gear.

16% of Britons aged 65+ spend 42 hours per month online - more than any other age group.

Another striking result, especially for traditional-media executives looking for their future customers, is that “kids are abandoning old and not-so-old media for the new. Whereas two years ago 59% of those aged 8 to 15 regularly watched videos, only 38% do now. Two years ago 61% regularly played video games compared with 53% today. Most are abandoning stand-alone media, such as DVDs, and turning instead to media such as the internet and in particular social-networking websites. The trend seems to accelerate as children move into their teenage years. Nearly two-thirds of children between the ages of 12 and 15 use the internet, compared with 41% of those aged 8 to 11.”

- Read BBC article
- Read Economist article

The competition jury, chaired by Bruce Sterling, will award a prize of 2,500 Euro to the work (published or unpublished) which best represents experimentation between arts and new technologies.

The contest is open to any Italian and foreign artist using digital technology as a language of creative expression, in all its shapes and formats and in combination with analogical technologies and/or any other material (i.e. computer animation / visual effects, digital music, interactive art, net art, software art, live cinema/vj, audiovisual performance, etc.).

(via Bruce Sterling’s Viridian Design, embellished with Bruce’s personal commentary)

Promising idea-makers are provided with undisturbed working conditions and paid scholarships.

One of Magyar Telekom’s objectives with this project is to promote new initiatives and creative ideas that later might be competitive on the market.

Research fields

What happens to the net once it meets the urban space? How does private space relate to the saturating wireless networks? Where does user created content gain authority? How does our use of cities alter as we get more and more real time feedback of its dynamics? What makes a home smart? Street-smart?

We would like to rethink and remix the possibilities of new media in our everyday lives and to augment connections between new technologies and our society.

Lab

KIBU offers a research lab space downtown Budapest, a basic grant for a dozen researchers, some equipment, and a dynamic workflow where sharing and helping is essential , and the freedom to capitalize any good idea.

Being sponsored by Magyar Telekom(MT), the leading Hungarian Telco, there is a direct path where ideas and prototypes get reach larger audiences, in case MT and the project group finds ways to do so. Our aim is build a platform where ideas are materializing and some end up in cultural context, some in the market.

Art and technology

Kitchen Budapest regularly organizes exhibitions to present our prototypes, as well as works or projects from related institutions and professionals.

(via IFTF’s Future Now)
 

UPDATE: 6 OCTOBER 2007:

Short report of visit by IFTF’s Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

“In the Experience Design Group we believe art, design and media have real and measurable consequences on how we behave towards basic human problems. While conventional forms of art and design such as painting and industrial design embrace two and three dimensions, at EDG we design Time itself. Time, left to itself, is an unreflective sequence of moments. Time, subjected to design, becomes meaningful Experience. So while we do incorporate two and three dimensional media in our work, we feel closer affinities to composers and architects – those working in time-based art and design practices. To design time as immersive experience is to persuade, simulate, inform, envision, entertain, and forecast events. It is to influence meaning and modify human behavior.

The Experience Design Group is devoted to innovative interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary practice-led research in the creation of new knowledge. Experience Design, a discipline relevant to artists and designers, explores and investigates the interplay between meaning and sensation within immersive experiences. To this end, our work is the creation of hybrid practices by synthesizing art and design, emerging paradigms of experiential and practical knowledge, history, theory and the experience economy.”

The Experience Design Group website - which is a bit of a flash nightmare - presents the programme’s three focus areas:

• Persuasive experience - How has art and design been used as an instrument to alter human behavior, and how will it be used in the future?
• Humanitarian experience - Can art, design, craft, and media have a real and measurable consequence on basic humanitarian problems by affecting the experience of being at risk?
• Environment experience - How do you begin to orchestrate the experience of an individual in a designed environment?

The programme, which is lead by Ronald Jones, an artist, critic and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, will start in September.

Five blogs are associated with/promoted by the programme:

• Experience design by Rolf Hughes
• Art and Design Research Methodologies by Rolf Hughes
• The End of Me by Rolf Hughes
• Efter Kritiken (in Swedish)
• Interactive architecture bynRuairi Glynn. Bartlett School of Architecture.

For more information, do check this 16 page pdf download.

Founded by 3 leading Internet associations, including the Internet Society, FING is a collective and open research and development project which focuses on tomorrow’s Internet’s uses, applications and services.

FING views the future Internet as not only more reliable, mobile, fast, user-friendly - but as a different Internet: the disappearing Internet, in which broadband, mobile, pervasive, intelligent technologies make it possible to focus on the user’s needs, lifestyles and desires. We believe this technological change will unleash a new innovation cycle in applications and services. We also believe that the Internet’s decentralised design should and can scale to the next generation and is innovation’s and competition’s best chance for the future.

FING intends to help corporations, public agencies, education and research organizations be at the forefront of this new cycle. Through collective and networked intelligence, creativity and experimentation, Fing seeks to improve the efficiency of the innovation process, as well as reduce risks for all involved parties.

FING:

• publishes Internet Actu, a weblog and media which is read by 70,000 professionals;
• supports several workgroups and communities;
• organises visits to research labs and innovative companies throughout the world;
• publishes papers, books and reports;
• moderates or takes part in foresight exercises such as Ci’Num, the Digital Civilizations Forum;
• organises international conferences and industry events such as Mobile Monday France, or the “Crossroads of Possibilities” which showcases very early-stage innovative projects.

FING is networked with other, similar initiatives throughout Europe and the world. FING’s CEO, Daniel Kaplan, is a member of the European Commission’s eEurope Advisory Group.

FING currently has more than 165 members, including: BNP Paribas, EDF, Ericsson, Eutelsat, France Telecom/Orange, Galeries Lafayette, HP, INRIA, Microsoft, the Ministries of Education and Research, Toshiba, etc.

Some browsing around led me to interesting initiatives such as:

• Villes 2.0 (Cities 2.0), which is aimed at helping traditional urban stakeholders (companies, institutions, social entities) and “digital actors” foresee urban and mobile transformations and work together on them. There are four focus areas: the augmented city (related to ubiquitous computing); my own city (which is about personalisation and user-centredness); service innovation (and co-creation); and social sustainability.
   
• Active Identities, which is focused on identifying and stimulating the necessary actions to make the active management of digital identities into a resource, a tool that allows users to control their lives and realise their projects, a factor of confidence, and a source of innovation and value creation.
   
• Innovative Interfaces, a new project which ponders the question how the fact that our direct and indirect interactions with machines and digital services, which keeps on getting better, simpler and easier, can help remove certain barriers for people with “difficulties” (e.g. non-users).
   
• Active and autonomous living until 90

Also of interest are a series of videos including this presentation by Fing CEO Daniel Kaplan at LIFT07, as well as a huge amount of rather unorganised project videos from the Crossroads of Possibilities project.

“On the Web, anyone can be a mapmaker.

With the help of simple tools introduced by Internet companies recently, millions of people are trying their hand at cartography, drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound and videos.

In the process, they are reshaping the world of mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other.

They are also turning the Web into a medium where maps will play a more central role in how information is organised and found.

Already there are maps of biodiesel fueling stations in New England, yarn stores in Illinois and hydrofoils around the world. Many maps depict current events, including the detours around a collapsed San Francisco Bay area freeway, and the path of two whales that swam up the Sacramento River delta in May.”

Read full story

Co-sponsored by BusinessWeek magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America, the Industrial Design Excellence Awards recognise the best product designs of the year.

This interactive architectural model of Lower Manhattan is the visual and educational centerpiece of Wall Street Rising’s new Downtown Information Center. It provides information about the area’s history, points of interest and events. The model also serves as a communal space that visitors and residents can gather around, fostering a sense of community. A gyro-mouse is used to navigate and highlight streets, buildings and other sites, and information about the selections is projected onto the model. In addition to practical information, there are also eight short historical documentaries about the area.

Nina Boesch was born in 1978 in Bremen, Germany. She studied at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen, Germany (where also current Experientia collaborator Marion Fröhlich graduated from) and at the Rhode Island School of Design (where Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels studied and taught and two other current Experientia interns - Laura Cunningham and Young-Eun Han - graduated from).

Last year Boesch won the 2006 Adobe Design Achievement Award in the category “interactive media” with her RISD thesis project “Manhattan Dissected“, an interactive application based on a subjectively viewed Manhattan. She started working for the New York Pentagram office after her graduation in 2006.

Janina was an Experientia intern in January-February 2006 and worked on several projects, including the design of this blog.