Progress

Much has occured since the last post. I haven't posted in awhile because I have been too busy reworking my initial concept, strengthening some of the ideas and also implementing it in J2ME.

The concept presentation made me realise that I really needed to strengthen the whole idea and make better use of the capabilities presented by a Mobile Device.

I started thinking about the features of the phone, and how these features could be used to make the concept more playful, fun, intriguing, and constantly new and engaging. Even though I still feel that the artform of Photography is one of the best options for the capturing of thought and for encouraging creativity, to simply create an application that shares pictures like a gallery was too simple.

I began thinking about a common theme that linked the children that would use this program: the street. These children spend their lives moving around the streets, and they view these place differently than others would. Moreso, I imagined that street educators using the program would approach children in a specific district - thus their geographic location and the "streets" was something they all shared. This led me into consideration of the use of "location" and hence GPRS as feature of the application in a way that allowed the children to explore where they lived through the artwork presented by other children like themselves.

I also started thinking about collaboration between the street children, as they often have each other as their only support network. My ideas lead to an application could somehow allow the children to openly collaborate with one another by creating a shared "artwork" or piece that told the story of a specific location. Following upon the GPRS idea, I decided what would be interesting is if, based on the current location of the child when using the application, an artwork based upon the work of others taken closest to that location was generated. The artwork would take on the form of a photo collage/mosaic.


Extending upon this idea, I thought about location, art and expression. It led me to think about Graffiti Tagging, whereby individuals mark their "area" through a unique "tag" or visual identity. In a similar process, I began to consider how I could push the idea of giving these children an identity. Individuality is often expressed through art and creativity. Thus I began thinking about giving these children a user image or "avatar" that was created by them to express who they are. Then, as the user explores each location, they are returned an artwork which incorporates the user images of the closest contributions of that location. In this way, the children are encouraged to contribute and thus "influence" the artwork of a specific location by creating a snapshot of how they view that location.

So far I have implemented the majority of the project in J2ME, with some Server Side PHP and MYSQL. I will post screenshots of the project so far shortly.

Collage

So I finally charged my camera to take a photo of my collage. It helps set the context for my project and I refer to it often to gain inspiration throughout the project.



Click for a closer view.

More notes

FURTHER CONCEPTS FOR PROJECT

• REFLECTIVE STORY-TELLING
How can you get them to reflect on their lives and want to seek help?

• Fun and games
Consider existing “scenario” games where the user learns important life skills such as the MTV game “Dafur is dying”.

Combine the two concepts
- Allow them to take photos of themselves through prompts e.g. Take a photo of yourself, Take a photo of your friends, etc
- This will construct a fictional story with them and their friends as the characters…
- Playback – different image based stories will results, with a choose your own adventure type choices to be made
- Choices will lead to different consequences.
- The aim is to allow them to reflect on how their choices will affect them.

READING FOR THIS WEEK

1. Experience Prototyping
Three critical design activities:
Understanding existing experiences, exploring design ideas and communicating design concepts.
Prototypes are respresentations of a design made before final artefacts exist. Created to inform design process and design decisions.
Functions of a prototype: the “role” an artifact will play, its “look and feel” and how it will be implemented, different levels of fidelity, prototypes for different audiences etc.
Key element of innovation.
Experience prototyping:
Emphasize the experiential aspect of whatever representations are needed to successfully relive or convey an experience with a product, space or system.
Any kind of representation in any medium that is designed to understand, explore or communicate what it might be like to engage with the product, space or system we are designing eg storyboards, scenarios, sketches, video, etc.
Experience Prototyping is valuable for:
Understanding existing user experiences and context
Exploring and evaluating design ideas
Communicating ideas to an audience

J2ME and Mobile Processing Tutorials

Just posting the tutorials from the last few weeks. The first is the file from the J2ME exercises we did in week 2, the typical Hello World program, and also an exercise for a MIDlet with GUI, and further, an exercise in programming a MIDlet with web access:

http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~ssoo0804/DECO3200/MyMIDlet.java
http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~ssoo0804/DECO3200/MyGUIMIDlet.java
http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~ssoo0804/DECO3200/MyHTTPMIDlet.java

We also did two exercises in Mobile Processing. The first is a simple drawing exercise to get us used to the interface. The second gets data from the web (weather data) and creates a visualisation of it.

http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~ssoo0804/DECO3200/mp2_start.pde
http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~ssoo0804/DECO3200/mp.pde

Okay thats it for now.

Design Brief

Based on our peer critique session last week, this week we have to start narrowing down the concept for our project we wish to implement, and write a short design brief and draw up an accompanying storyboard. Below is the brief so far. It may change as I get a better idea about the project.

DECO3200 PROJECT DESIGN BRIEF

Project Description
A digital story-telling application for Guatemalan Street Children to play and interact with, which will encourage creativity and exploration, provide a sense of accomplishment, and allow them to share their stories with the world.

Goals
- To provide a form of entertainment and play for the Street Children of Guatemala.
- To encourage creativity, exploration, and stimulate the desire to learn in the children.
- To make other people in the world more aware of the Street Children’s current situation, with the aim of generating more support for local charities and organizations.

Primary User(s)
- Guatemalan Street Children between 8 – 15 years, the majority of which are illiterate and enumerate.
- Local charities/organizations - educated Adult volunteers.

Assumptions
- Application will run on a shared mobile device made available to the children for a limited time.

User Needs
- Street Children need a form of entertainment and play.
- Street Children need a voice and need to be heard.
- Street Children need an exploration tool to develop creativity and an interest in learning.
- Local Charities/Organizations need to increase awareness of the street children’s current life situations.

Functional Requirements
- Application must be fun and playful, and be of interest to the children.
- Ability to cross linguistic and literacy barriers

Technical Requirements
Hardware: Mobile Phone with multimedia capabilities (camera, sound, video)
Software: J2ME, Mobile Processing

Ideas Brainstorm

For this week we have to come up with 5 ideas for an application we could possibly implement for the community we have chosen. The ideas I came up with are as follows:

IDEAS BRAINSTORM


Issue: Loss of childhood and innocence
- aim to give the children back their childhood
- What makes up a childhood? Fun, games, learning, growing, playing, no worries.
- Average age of a street child: 7 years. Average life expectancy: 30 years.
- Collaborative educational games that build up social skills, literacy levels.
- Create an application that the children can play with – something fun, interactive.
- Children also need to feel safe and secure. How can a mobile phone application provide for this?
- Keep in mind adults are the generally the ones that have caused them harm, physical abuse, etc.

1. Support Network
- Kid’s helpline
- Put children in touch with people that can help them such as Caza Alianza
- Big Brother/Big Sister networks?
- Or access to counselling services
- Map to show them locations of shelters
- Caza Alianza’s volunteers have also been attacked for trying to help the children. Is there a way to put them in touch with the street children through wireless technologies.

2. Storybook
- aim to give these children a voice
- to be able to tell their story
- capture the lives of the street children, let them tell their story through videos, pictures, drawings, sound, words
- tell the world their hopes and dreams – possibly be used by charities to aid in obtaining more support

5. Prevention
- bring back the importance of the family unit
- social, medical, legal aid for families
- support network for the single parent families to make a better home for the children to stop them from running away in the first place
- helping single mothers e.t.c cope with supporting a family

3. Access to information
- puberty – no support during this awkard stage, no understanding, sex education
- sex education is important – many of the female children on the street become young mothers due to either prostitution, or sex at an early age, lack of knowledge regarding sexual rights. Their children in turn are at risk of also become children of the street.
- Information regarding drugs – drug addiction esp. solvent abuse is a problem. Give information about the long and short term effects of drug abuse.

4. Lack of proper role models
- street children see adults as abusers. They are usually wary of obtaining help from adults as these are the people that have either abandoned them, or those that wish them harm (street children abusers, police).
- Seek role models in former street children who have sought help from organizations and made a better life for themselves
- Success stories – to allow street children to realise that a better life that on the street is not just a dream.

Education
- learning tools to give children the basics/foundations for education
- majority of street children are illiterate
- in the form of games?

Collage

The first individual assignment is to construct a collage that tells the story of your community - their history, what they do in their day to day lives, their struggles, their hopes and dreams.

Below are some of the keywords and phrases I used to build my collage. I will post a picture of the collage at a later date.

STUFF FOR COLLAGE

From www.toyboxcharity.co.uk

"If a dream could become real, it would be to live with my family and have a different life." Jose, 15 yrs old

"To live on the streets is so sad. If my dream could come true, it would be to have a life without drugs." Alfredo, 13 yrs old

"Life on the street is like a prison because you are mistreated" Miguel, 12 yrs old



GUATEMALA - HISTORY
Civil War
36 years of Internal Conflict
150,000 dead
50,000 missing
Difficult Rebuilding

Hurricane Mitch 1998
Category 5
Most Destructive in Recorded History
26, 000 killed
Drought

Hurricane Stan 2005
760 killed
Long term damage to the infrastructure

Factors
Poverty – areas of poor housing, little access to running water, adequate sanitation
No Education – parents unemployed and illiterate

Types
Orphaned
Abandoned – by parents too poor to cope
Runaways – from physical or sexual abuse

Children OF the street and Children ON the street
Rejected by Society
Regarded as disposable
Victims of harassment and violent abuse

SURVIVAL
Numbing the pain and loneliness → solvent abuse, drug addiction
Starvation vs joinging a violent gang, stealing, begging, selling their bodies
Child prositution
Street life is dangerous

Latin America's Street Children

http://www.toyboxcharity.org.uk/street_children.html
Factors that push a child onto the streets
1. Poverty – street children are likely to have come from areas of poor housing, with little access to running water or adequate sanitation. Likely to be a lack of social services and affordable education. Parents are usually unemployed and illiterate.
2. War and political and social unrest within the country.
3. Natural disasters cause homelessness and displacement
4. Urbanisation – when families move from rural to urban areas and lose the support of their extended family making them more vulnerable when under pressure. Children are often abandoned.
5. Orphans – as a result of civil war, drought, famine, AIDS epidemic, city violence
6. Dysfunctional family environment – children that leave home as a result of abuse, or they may be abandoned. Some children are born on the streets, eg if their parents are prostitutes. Note: though these are strong contributory factors, most children from poor and dysfunctional families do stay at home.
Factors that push a child onto the streets
Some children are attracted to the street life. These are often children who come from high-risk areas and who have been spending the majority of their days on the streets.
1. Gangs – children may have made friends on the streets and want to leave home to become an official member.
2. Lure of freedom and entertainment in a big city – disenchantment with their life, no longer want to work for their parents, live with 7 siblings in a small shack.
3. Drug Addiction
4. Prospect of making a better life in an attempt to escape hardship.

What the street children say
"If a dream could become real, it would be to live with my family and have a different life." Jose, 15 yrs old

"To live on the streets is so sad. If my dream could come true, it would be to have a life without drugs." Alfredo, 13 yrs old

"Life on the street is like a prison because you are mistreated" Miguel, 12 yrs old

FACTS
• Estimated 40 million children live on the streets of Latin America’s densly populated cities. (United Nations estimate about 100 million street children worldwide)
• Types: those living on the street with no home at all, those that spend most of their time on the streets without opportunities for education and care, child workers that spend most of their time working on the street
• Observers from our partner in Guatemala say that street children there have a life expectancy of around four years on the street.
• According to Unicef, some 75,000 severely malnourished children have been identified in Guatemala in 2005, a consequence of three simultaneous emergencies: chronic poverty, drought and the coffee crisis. Some 67 per cent of indigenous children suffer from chronic malnutrition.
• Unicef also reported in 2004 that in Guatemala in the first 10 months of 2002, gangs or security forces killed 408 children and youths, but most street children were killed by drive by shootings.

Research On a Specific Community

I have spent the last few days trying to pinpoint a specific community of interest. I decided to begin by simply researching current technology in developing nations. Some of the articles of interest:

BBC Article: Is wi-fi good for developing nations?

AiDA - Accessible Information on Development Activities

UN ICT Task Force Site

After much thought I decided I was most interested in Latin American Nations as their developing communities contain many social, economic and political issues that cause much poverty, unemployment, corruption and civic unrest.

Research in Latin America's Social Situation:

The Educational Portal of the Americas published the following article in its Digital Library:
The Social Situation of Latin America and Its Impact on the Family and Education

UNIDO - United Nations Industrial Development Organization: Technology Foresight Initiative for Latin America

Bridge the Digital Divide - Latin America

I also read several pdf publications found in Social Sciences Databases which I will include in a later post.

From this initial research I decided I wanted to find out more about the Street Children of Latin America. I will outline my research from today in a separate post.

Reading Notes

24/7/06

INDEX Awards

Designs to Improve Life

- What improves life? Varies according to geographical, cultural and economic background. INDEX seeks to encourage global debate on what improves life.
- Many improvements can often have drawbacks, others may be beneficial in one part of the world and negative in others.
- Solutions to improve life created by designers in collaboration with economists, private companies and other professionals. Eg new kinds of housing, new workplaces, means of transport, better communications.
- HOJE TORV – 3000m2 public plaza to be built on the roof of a department store – example of how major cities can provide public recreational spaces in disused spaces.
- HIPPO ROLLER – designed for developing countries where women have to walk long distances to fetch household water. Up to 90L water can effortlessly be transported over large distances. Social changes to the villages, fetching water become more appealing to younger men.
- PARASITE: temporary shelter for the homeless in the form of an inflatable plastic igloo that utilize surplus heat from the city to inflate the shelter and keep it warm.
- A-POC – fabric made by a computerised knitting and weaving machine – reduces wastage, allows consumers to become part of the design process.
- FORD GLO CAR – reacting with simulated signs of emotion to dangers in the traffic.

OLPC – One Laptop Per Child
- aims at designing a $100 laptop that can ultimately change the way the world’s children are educated.

Thinkcycle – Open Collaborative Design
- Design Projects are listed as open source for people to make contributions

TIER
- Wireless Project (WILD) – aims to bring long distance wireless connections to rural regions
- MILLEE – mobile and immersive learning for literacy in emerging economies. Aims to address illiteracy among underserved communities in developing regions.
SPEECH
- low-cost low power speech recognition software for user interface purposes.

GRAMEENPHONE



25/7/06

SHORT-RANGE WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES WITH MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEMS
- Blue-tooth enabled devices will provide a platform and opportunity to implement mobile payment systems and penetrate the commercial markets.
- In the near future, the mobile phone is likely to become a “PERSONAL TRUST DEVICE” and a powerful electronic wallet
- Wireless data transfer is highly preferred for personal and business purposes, offering users flexibility and convenience.
BLUETOOTH
- Bluetooth operates at the 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) frequency band, which is unlicensed and available worldwide.
- Provides opportunity for ad hoc connections between a wide range of personal electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops and so on. Also implemented in home automation systems.
- Advantage- low power consumption which is a key benefit to mobile devices.
- Advantage – used the Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) method to avoid interference – helps payment systems to provide a reliable service.
- 2001 – Ericsson and Eurocard AB in Sweden tested Blue-tooth payment system. Security is a huge concern for wireless applications and is relatively difficult to configure.
INFRARED
- IrDA is one of the most mature and established players for cable replacements applications. It is a point to point method of communication between devices.
- Advantages – low power consumption, well known in the industry.
- Relatively easy to use and configure.
- South Korea – Harex InfoTech – mobile payments system called “ZOOP” – combines mobile devices and wireless IrDA to create a mobile wallet.
- Limitations – cannot penetrate objects such as walls, have to operate in the line of sight and at short range to set up the communications channel. Limits performance of applications.
RFID
- uses electromagnetic fields coupled with radio frequency. Three components: antenna, transceiver and an RF.
- Works at different frequency ranges. Also can read ranges from a few cm to 5 m, depending on the frequency of the devices.
- NOKIA and MASTERCARD have tested new retail payments.
- Advantages – requires no contact and no line-of-sight conditions, is automated and easy to use. Systems are simple, operated by consumers. Popularity is growing.
- ISSUES: PRIVACY, cost for Chips
NEAR FIELD COMMUNCATIONS (NFC)
- open global infrastructure for easy access to wireless services and data anywhere. Offers a convenient connection for all types of electronic devices. BUILT IN SECURITY MECHANISM
- Works in 13.56MHz Frequency band and working range of 3 to 30cm, compatible with RFID technology. Offers a less costly sultion for the implementation of wireless products and supports file and data transfer.
- Low power consumption, inbuilt security mechanism, easy to use and establish connection. Rapid and easy communications.
- Philips and VISA in 2004 – mobile payment system – transfer payment details to the terminal and authentification service based on standard 3D secure.
- Limitations – only works at very short distances.

Day One Brainstorm

Studio this semester involves "designing for the developing world". The device: a mobile phone.

We begin by delving into how we perceive the world currently, and what changes we foresee occuring socially, economically, environmentally, technology-wise and politically. We as designers have the ability to make these changes occur more rapidly, by designing for them.

The international perspective is:
Social : Demographic change - areas of an ageing population, vs the younger generation.
Economic: Wealth distribution - a bigger gap forming between the rich and the poor
Environmental: Resource Depletion, Climate Change
Technology: Convergence - minaturization - placing all applications on the one device
Political: Lack of vision in our governments and leaders

Other Ideas:
Social: Bigger network connections are made possible via technology, trend towards anonymity and individualism, privacy, trend towards segregation, tribalism, groups forming based on interests but perhaps removal of cross-cultural barriers.

Mobile Phones as a device presently offer:
Communication Medium via Carrier (eg Vodafone, Optus etc)
- Telephone
- Video Phone
- Text Messaging
- Multimedia Messaging
- Voice Messages (Voicemail)

Data Storage:
- Phone Book/Address Book (Contact Details for People)
- Call Register (Missed Calls, Dialled Numbers, Call Durations etc)
- Organisational Applications (Calendars, To Do Lists)

Other:
- Use as a Watch/Clock
- Alarm Clock
- Calculator
- Timer/Stopwatch

Gaming Device:
- Gaming Applications

Ability to run "add-on" applications:
Examples:
World Clock

Allows Personalisation via:
- Ringtones
- Wallpapers
- Profile settings (for Meetings, Outdoor etc)
- Other settings
- Customisable exterior features