May 3-7, 2005
Thesis Presentations
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| Stemcell-Bridging social gap | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Shu-wei Hsu | |
| Instructor: | Wilson, Kathleen | |
| Class: | Final Project Seminar | |
| URL: | http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/~swh228/thesis | |
| Keywords: | social software, ubiquitous computing, group invitation | |
| Stemcell is a social software that helps you invite your friends to a social gathering by sending text messages. Don\'t know where to go? You can search for your friends\' favorite places like restaurants, galleries or performances from Stemcell website or directly from your cellphone. No need to bother your friends again. | ||
| Technology itself should not only be a means to helping businesses grow but also of making life easier and more fun for people. My thesis project, Stemcell, has three main directions: First, I will bridge the gap of the cellphone and the Internet to make information more accessible. Secondly, I will explore the ways electronic invitations can be made more convenient for guests and friends. Lastly, I will use ubiquitous computing to create a social network designed for food and art lovers. | ||
| Personal Statement: | I use social software such as Evite and Dodgeball, which have made life easier than before, but more things can be done with them. Evite is good for organizing events and sending out invitations with one click and Dodgeball is good for searching for bars and seeing if any friends or friends-of –friends are around with your cellphone in hand. However, there are some inconveniences that can be improved when searching for restaurants and art events and receiving invitations. For example, sometimes my friends ask me the location of a restaurant or theatre. I know how to get there but am not sure of the address, so I want a database which contains all the information I need and is easily accessible to all of us. Moreover, when I get Evite from friends, it bothers me to have to write down the address and time on a piece of paper so I need an invention to save my time. | |
| Context: | In the book, ”The Internet Untethered”, Tom Standage states that “The internet is still in a telegraphic stage of development, in the sense that the complexity and expense of PCs prevent many people from using it. The mobile phone thus promises to do for the internet what the telephone did for the telegraph: to make it a truly mainstream technology.” Hence, the purpose of my thesis project research is to understand what kinds of applications or services have been developed so far, so that I have an idea of what can be strengthened and polished for my final project, StemCell. Two of my inspirations are Evite and Dodgeball which are services that help people build up their social networks. | |
| Audience: | The audience for Stemcell includes English language users who love art, performance and food and who like to organize social events in Manhattan. | |
| User Scenario: | Sunday 11:00am
You just wake up. You feel a little hungry and also want to chat with friends while dining out. You send out a text message to a group of people to see if anyone can go with you. Sunday 3:00pm You feel like playing basketball after the brunch You sent out a text message to a group of people to see if anyone want to play. Sunday 10:00pm You get a message from a friend. He is in need of some one who can go to a movie in an hour with him now. You simply call back to say ”Yes, I will.” | |
| Methodology: | My thesis project will be the continuation of my past project, IMvite, of which my original attempt was to design this tool for searching for venues and inviting friends via a WAP site. In order to enhance IMvite’s functionality, first I want to compare the existing social software, like Dodgeball, Evite, and Friendster to try to understand the pros and cons of using those services. Secondly, I will discuss if text messenging is preferable to just using a WAP site. Third, I will research people’s interactions in the real world and what I can do to improve their communication and social network. Finally, once my prototype is done, I will focus on the user interface and the whole experience of using IMvite as I get more feedback from the first user testing. | |
| Sources: | 1.Howard Rheingold. \"Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution\" 2002
2.boyd, danah. ”Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks. “ Conference on Human Factor and Computing Systems (CHI 2004). Vienna: ACM, April 24-29, 2004 3.www.evite.com 4.www.dodgeball.com 5.www.friendster.com | |
| Conclusions: | There are lots of guidebooks and websites that recommend which shows are worth seeing and which restaurants are great, but who can give you better tips on buying the tickets or what dishes to taste other than your friends? I hope my little invention is able to help create mobile social networks which hopefully bring users a more comprehensive sharing experience. | |