archive for the ‘ubiquitous computing’ category

Making mobile printing easier with QR codes

5 August 2009 | Bo Begole

One of the best features of the new class of U.S. mobile smartphones is that they're finally capable of reading QR (Quick Response) codes. These codes, which already appear all over Japan and Korea, are 2D bar codes typically displayed on something -- such as a poster, webpage, magazine ad, or store window -- and captured by a phone camera. The phone decodes the image and launches the appropriate application to see the text, browse the website, send SMS, or call the number that was contained in the QR code. In all these scenarios, the phone is reading the QR code. But you can also turn this model on its head by having the phone display the code to be read by another device.

Augmented Reality: Increasing collective intelligence

23 July 2009 | Lawrence Lee

Search engines like Google have trained us to believe we can find the answer to any question. Now activity streams from Twitter, Facebook, and others are changing our expectations around information yet again. We now demand information in real-time that’s socially and contextually relevant. Contextual information transforms our interactions within our physical environment... This area of research is called Augmented Reality, and it spans a wide spectrum of applications...

Can a recommender choose what’s best?

7 July 2009 | Ellen Isaacs

While doing a user experience evaluation of a mobile recommendation system, I noticed how the list-based design implied that there was a single best choice, with 'goodness' decreasing in even increments. This made me wonder whether it makes sense to try to identify the one Best option when you're choosing among options that vary across many dimensions. Making choices might be easier if we assume that there is rarely one single Best.

Serving shoppers’ needs in physical stores: Responsive Mirror

1 July 2009 | Bo Begole

We've found that there are certain types of information that shoppers need but still cannot get online. Certain kinds of tactile and physical information cannot easily be communicated electronically: texture, fit, drape, flow, movement, light refraction, heft, etc. So, people still visit stores to find out how things feel. But we can still help shoppers by supplementing their decision-making processes with electronic information.

The future of pervasive marketing: Scenarios

30 June 2009 | Bo Begole

"Responsive Media" applications are one of the most exciting areas of current research in human-computer interaction. Based on technologies that can detect human response using cameras and other sensors to glean demographic data (gender, race, age) and physiological states (eye gaze, orientation, pupil dilation, skin temp, expression), these applications can be used for human-robot interaction, marketing, gaming, digital concierge avatars, and more.