Thesis - developing emotional channel between people through product-service system (work on progress)
FB app + Device 2008/04/10 10:10 1. Description
Keywords
Mass customization, social networking, communication, emotion, affective interface, modularity
2. Target audience
Teens, Young Adults
3. Background
The growing tendency to put oneself first leads to unparalleled freedom, but it can also create an enormous amount of pressure and isolation.
Even though study after study show that people who have good relationships with friends and family are the happiest, many times people are geographically or emotionally distant to their loved ones because they are pursing professional goals.
In urban environments, communication devices such as cell phones, PDAs and Blackberries are ubiquitous and people are almost constantly digitally connected. However, most devices are designed to share information rather than create emotional connections aimed at comforting and supporting each other. I imagine the old box in the garage full of letters, postcards, and photos of memory. Those slow media is disappearing as everything becomes faster and remain digital. What about the memories disappearing in the digital world? I wanted to create a medium that can capture a certain memory of a certain relationship in the digital world.
4. What is Funji
Funji is a product-service system that includes Funji application in Facebook, a Hardware prototype and
website(www.funji2u.com), which is composed of video and photo archive about relationship between people using Funji.
<Usage flow>
<Hardware mockup>
5. Research
The slow media is disappearing as everything becomes faster
and things are disappearing in virtual world without a trace.
What about the memories?
What about relationships in virtual world?
“I want to collect the sweet memory and the relationship that gives me comfort and makes me happy.”
Shinyoung imagined the old box in the garage full of letters, postcards, and photos of memory.
Shinyoung is developing a customizable product-service system called Funji through which people can share emotions with each other.
Funji devices and the facebook application not only deliver a voice message from individuals, but also provide a representation of their identity or the relationship through customized colors and designs. Funji device also randomly vibrates, yawns, snores or plays unique sounds to give a user a sense of companionship. It is also small enough to fit into the palm of a hand so that people can easily hold and touch it and carry it around wherever they go.
Funji hopes to be a new medium that can capture a certain memory of a certain relationship in the digital world so that you can keep them forever. You can also use it as a secret note that you pass in classes or secret code that you use with your special friends.
What about the memories?
What about relationships in virtual world?
“I want to collect the sweet memory and the relationship that gives me comfort and makes me happy.”
Shinyoung imagined the old box in the garage full of letters, postcards, and photos of memory.
Shinyoung is developing a customizable product-service system called Funji through which people can share emotions with each other.
Funji devices and the facebook application not only deliver a voice message from individuals, but also provide a representation of their identity or the relationship through customized colors and designs. Funji device also randomly vibrates, yawns, snores or plays unique sounds to give a user a sense of companionship. It is also small enough to fit into the palm of a hand so that people can easily hold and touch it and carry it around wherever they go.
Funji hopes to be a new medium that can capture a certain memory of a certain relationship in the digital world so that you can keep them forever. You can also use it as a secret note that you pass in classes or secret code that you use with your special friends.
Keywords
Mass customization, social networking, communication, emotion, affective interface, modularity
2. Target audience
Teens, Young Adults
3. Background
The growing tendency to put oneself first leads to unparalleled freedom, but it can also create an enormous amount of pressure and isolation.
Even though study after study show that people who have good relationships with friends and family are the happiest, many times people are geographically or emotionally distant to their loved ones because they are pursing professional goals.
In urban environments, communication devices such as cell phones, PDAs and Blackberries are ubiquitous and people are almost constantly digitally connected. However, most devices are designed to share information rather than create emotional connections aimed at comforting and supporting each other. I imagine the old box in the garage full of letters, postcards, and photos of memory. Those slow media is disappearing as everything becomes faster and remain digital. What about the memories disappearing in the digital world? I wanted to create a medium that can capture a certain memory of a certain relationship in the digital world.
4. What is Funji
Funji is a product-service system that includes Funji application in Facebook, a Hardware prototype andwebsite(www.funji2u.com), which is composed of video and photo archive about relationship between people using Funji.
<Usage flow>
Through observing how users using each tool and asking specific questions to users, answers
to three questions will follow as a result.
- Can mass customization provide "happiness" to consumers?
- Are chosen affective interfaces effective to deliver and trigger emotions?
- What is the role of communities for mass customization?
6. Finding
TBD
7. Conclusion
TBD
8. Reference
1) Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D., Generation Me, New York, Free Press, 2006
2) http://www.omorphy.com/happiness/
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration
4) Lesley Axelrod, The affective Connection: How and When Users Communicate Emotion, Doctoral
Consortium, CHI 2004, April 24-29, Vienna, Austria ACM 1-58113-703-6/04/0004
5) Rosa Banos, Sense of presence in Emotional Virtual Environments, Universidad de Valencia,
Presence 2004
8) http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=347642.347708&coll=portal&dl=ACM&type=ser
ies&idx=SERIES378&part=series&WantType=Proceedings&title=DIS