Research Group Projects and Descriptions

We have become reliant on digital information for communication, commerce, and entertainment. This information needs to be always available, whether stored locally on our computers, on enterprise servers at work, or via third-party services like GMail. Most importantly, we should have choices beyond desktop computers or smartphones to access it. The Information Ecology group explores ways to connect our physical environments with information resources. Through the use of low-cost, ubiquitous technologies such as sensors and consumer electronics, we are creating seamless and pervasive ways to interact with our information—and with each other.

The BiDi Screen is an example of a new type of I/O device that possesses the ability to both capture images and display them. This bidirectional screen extends the latest trend in LCD devices, which has seen the incorporation of photo-diodes into every display pixel. Using a novel optical masking technique developed at the Media Lab, the BiDi Screen can capture lightfield-like quantities, unlocking a wide array of applications from 3-D gesture and touch interaction with CE devices, to seamless video communication.

We all use systems for organizing our cluttered schedules, from the day planner to Getting Things Done. One time-honored method, if messy, is writing to-do lists. Daydar is a framework that makes this process social: Can you learn from the working styles of others? Can you collaboratively create an environment of healthy competition by being aware of your friends' daily accomplishments? Can this help you to find a better balance between work and play? Within this framework we are experimenting with various systems, both physical and digital, that allow you to monitor your own and others' productivity, help you to get motivated, and enable you to document and visualize the process of accomplishing whole projects.

Functionally, television content delivery has remained largely unchanged since the introduction of television networks. EcoTV explores an experience where the role of the corporate network is replaced by a social network. Channel content is composed of a series of smaller parts, strewn together based on a user's interests, community, and peers. This project creates an interface to explore television socially, connecting a user with a community through content, with varying levels of interactivity: from passively consuming a series, to actively crafting one's own television and social experience.

If everyone says time is relative, why is it still so rigidly defined? There have been many attempts to address the issue of coordinating schedules, but each of these attempts runs into an issue of rigidity: in order to negotiate an event, a specific time must be designated in advance. This model is inherently poor at accommodating life's unpredictability. Kairoscope looks at time from a human perspective: allowing people to coordinate events socially and on the fly, without worrying about precision. This project evaluates the potential implications of a shared, malleable schedule, as well as the data inputs and user interactions necessary to create such a system.

We provide a software and hardware toolkit for creating an on-body network of tactile and ambient information accessories, connecting people physically with information accessed via the internet. My Ears Are Burning uses the toolkit to make a user aware of attention being paid to her online presence. Heating elements placed on the user's ears are activated when, for example, her Web page is accessed or she is tagged in a photograph on Facebook. The toolkit hardware consists of a Bluetooth module outfitted with simple-to-use I/O pins for connecting input sensors and output actuators. The software component resides on a cell phone that acts as a router between the Bluetooth modules and the Internet. This platform is also used for the Proverbial Wallets project.

We have trouble controlling our consumer impulses, and there's a gap between our decisions and the consequences. When we pull a product off the shelf, do we know our bank-account balance, or whether we're over budget for the month? Our existing senses are inadequate to warn us. The Proverbial Wallet fosters a financial sense at the point of purchase by embodying our electronically tracked assets. We provide tactile feedback reflecting account balances, spending goals, and transactions as a visceral aid to responsible decision making.

Would you know if a dear, but seldom seen, friend happened to be on the same train as you? The proximeter is both an agent that tracks the past and future proximity of one’s social cloud, and an instrument that charts this in an ambient display. By reading existing calendar and social network feeds of others, and abstracting these into a glanceable pattern of paths, we hope to nuture within users a social proprioception and nudge them toward more face-to-face interactions when opportunities arise.

The Internet supports many great tools for communicating at a distance in order to maintain personal relationships and build social networks. However, these tools rarely help us realize which relationships are strained by lack of attention. Social Garden explores using virtual plants as a metaphor for relationships, encouraging us to tend to our social connections as we do our gardens. By tracking and analyzing communications through email, instant messaging, social websites, SMS, and phone, Social Garden proposes to give feedback on how our relationships are flourishing or wilting, and organizes our social circles. We also explore the garden metaphor as a practical interface to browse and manage conversations and contacts.

While computer data can live virtually anywhere, we are still faced with the mundane tasks of document management such as uploading, sharing, and syncing between locations. Window Wallet aims to remove the burden of managing your data across screens, computers, and devices by turning your portable device into a virtual wallet of data and software. This project looks at developing an interface that facilitates this process, acting on your mobile device as a virtual conduit between local data and data in the cloud. It allows you both to access and transfer documents independent of your physical location.