Thesis: Text Archives

June 04, 2005

ABSTRACT

Today more people are image blogging. The idea of taking digital
pictures and posting them on the web has been implemented by two popular systems: flickr.com and TextAmerica.com. The former is an elaborate online system allowing images to be uploaded in multiple ways, while the later TextAmerica aims primarily at the mobile user. These services have given rise to new creative ideas for using this developing technology.

AN INTRODUCTION TO PUFFLE: A networked camera. No need for memory cards. It’s not just a modern day point and shoot, but now it’s point, shoot, send and more. This child friendly device enables young children to take photographs that are automatically uploaded on the Internet. The Puffle has also been devised as a child monitoring system that would get to know and be with the child from infancy, keeping a visual record of the child. Then as the child grows, the use of the Puffle changes from a familiar child’s object with monitoring capabilities into a device that the child controls when he starts to record his own world.

CONCLUSION
The Puffle will open up a world for children in a way that lets them not only have a way to look back on their lives, but will also allow them to look at the world they live in. This is meant to be a children’s platform.

But of course the changing concepts of Blogging might not stop with children; there is a whole market for these sorts of device, which might include an adult or two!

Download The Puffle short thesis

Posted by dimitri at 04:22 AM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2005

Define and Defend

Puffle (name in progress) Blogging through a physical interface.

Focus: Blogs are a good way to preserve our past; we should have tools to allow us to create ways to document our development and ourselves.

Direction: To stimulate desire to document, everyday objects should have ways to input information to a life blog (for not better name for the concept.)

Looking to start with children, I would like to create a series of devices, primarily toys, to stimulate document building process. Today when on blogs it is usually from the computer. Today people have started to even use the cellphone. The idea is to take the process out of the iconized environment and put it into a logical other place.

The idea is to build a stuffed animal that can be used as a blogging device for children. This would be a toy that the child would grow up with, a sort of high tech safety blanket. I image it being with the child from birth through the young child stage, being a blogging device that the parents control to document their child growing up. It would in many ways be an easy replacement for child monitoring systems of today. Then in the later stages the Child would be able to document on their own.

Object constancy is a mental development stage that children go through.

…According to the great developmental psychologist, Margaret Mahler, between the ages of 24 and 36 months of life, the infant is finally able to cope with the mother's absence (by finding appropriate substitutes to her presence). It knows that she will return and trusts her to do so time and again.

The psychic image of the mother is internalized as a stable, reliable, and predictable object. As the infant's sense of time and verbal skills evolve, it becomes more immune to delayed gratification and tolerant of inevitable separation.

Piaget, the renowned child psychologist, concurred with Mahler and coined the term "object constancy" to describe the dynamics she observed…

Using this concept, the Puffle can be introduced into the child life at an early stage so that it would become a constant in the child’s life. The child can grow use to having Puffle around. Leading it to play the part as a safety blanket.

…During this period, verbal communication develops rapidly, play becomes more purposeful and constructive, and fantasy play, role play, and make believe are initiated. A sense of time develops, along with the capacity to tolerate delay of gratification. The child is resistant to demands of adults and often reveals an unrealistic wish for autonomy. The re-current mild or moderate negativism of this period is essential to the establishment of identity. Individuation proceeds…

The period of separation that stimulate various forms of play, this will help bring Puffle and the child closer together because Puffle can be a friend who will always be there and will allow the child to give and take. The idea is that Linus’ blanket also could have been the retainer of the paths Linus took through out his childhood, and not just a security device, if the blanket is going to be with him always why not have it remember events too.

…Many adults will remember a favourite soft toy or blanket which they used to carry around when they were a child - like Linus in the Peanuts cartoon strip. Or they will have seen their own children hanging on to a particular toy. What is less well known is that many adults continue to use such objects when they are separated from someone important to them.

A new study published on Monday 8 March 1999 in the British Journal of Medical Psychology, reveals that adults will use any object which has a link with the person they are separated from.

Psychological therapist Jenny Arthern, of Wakefield and Pontefract Community Health and Dr Anna Madill, of the University of Leeds, interviewed various psychotherapists about the emergence and use of transitional objects in adult clients. Soft objects such as jumpers and toys were used, but also pens, postcards, stones, books, answerphone-tapes and video tapes.

Why does holding a book or jumper suddenly make an adult feel less alone? "The person may be using the object much as a small child might", said Ms Arthern. "To a baby or toddler, touch and smell may be more important than words. As adults, touch and smell still have the power to move us and embody the presence of the person from whom we are separated."…

From the research above it can be seen that could be a object which the user can continue to use throughout life. The form will be important. It must be created to transcend time. A simple form with little flex, distortion and few appendages will help the device have a long life. Durable material will be an influence the length of life.

…The National Youth Agency would like to encourage the use of our blogs amongst young people and youth workers. It has been suggested that suggested that approximately 50% of all blogs are created and maintained by 13 to 19-year-olds. The space is free of charge and available for personal use…

Puffle, like the work done by NYA will be a system that gives children a platform to build space full of memories, from the infant stages through young childhood, and sometimes further.

…Dateless (still useful though) Australian Government NetAlert Limited: Mobile phones have become popular with children for many reasons including: Personal – Gives children a sense of ownership...

My influences are the life recorder concepts people have been talking about over the years. “Teddy” is one idea that Donald Norman talks about in one of his books; this is the core platform that has been mentioned when talking about my idea. Yet he adds intelligence, to the Teddy thinking of it as a PIM, helping the user to remember.

…The delights of having information ever-present are amazingly seductive. Wouldn't it be nice to have a personal assistant, small and unobtrusive, that could remember the details of life for us, so that we could always have them available on demand? It would take care of the daily trivia of life, things like telephone, passport and drivers license numbers, as well as the important things: What was the name of that wonderful restaurant we had dinner at two years ago?

How late does the library stay open during the summer?

Do I have time to get there?

Is today Michael's birthday?

I forgot all about it. Quick, I'll buy him something. Umm, what size does he wear?

Remember good old what's-his-name, that party at what's-her-name's house?...

…By starting so young, the Teddy could store within itself all the information and experiences of a lifetime. People would become quite intimate with their Teddys. It would know all about them, while also giving them complete access to the world's databases of knowledge. I assume that by the time such devices are possible the speech recognition problem will certainly be licked, so we could communicate with Teddy by talking. We talk to it, it talks to us…

Yet the idea really stems from my love for relationship between Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin and Linus and his Blanket. The look, for the doll, at the moment, comes from a character I have doodled for years and has a considerable likeness to the Ugly Dolls found in stores today.

How many times have you wanted to find a picture from your childhood, but couldn’t? I want my project to make people think about how their memories of childhood are stored. People do and should think about their history and what they will leave behind. If parents start their children off with a product like Puffle, the child will hopefully want to continue documenting and memorizing their daily life. And they will enjoy having something to look back on as well as future generations.

...Eventually, as people came to rely upon their Teddys, they would reach a point where they would be disoriented without them. After all, with a Teddy, you would never be alone. You could always talk to Teddy. It would never desert its owner. It could be programmed to give reassurances, to follow progress on a task and to make appropriate suggestions. It could serve as a continual reminder of names and dates: time to do exercise, to phone home, buy gifts, etc...

There are many aspects to this project I have planned out: I am aiming high with a hope to complete all to 85% of the product’s system with a fully working prototype.

There are three elements:
The Puffle doll with it technology
Puffle will be a simple form with a selection technology: various touch sensors, communication abilities and media acquisition resources.

The Blogging server/platform:
The back end of the Puffle will have a networking element which will connect to a web building back end and a hand off system between communication technologies.

The Parents’ monitoring station side:
This is more of a accessory then a main focus. The monitoring station is more of a by product of the technology present in the Puffle making it an in crib system to listen and view the child.

A Puffle linking to the cell phone:
Parents can’t always be present this is a way to link children to the child and vice-versa. An example it a vibration sent to the cellphone from the Puffle. I am looking at Puffle can receiving some sort of feedback via sms

Posted by dimitri at 01:15 AM | Comments (1)

January 24, 2005

Idea

Puffle (name in progress)

Blogging through a physical interface.

Focus: Blogs are a good way to preserve our past, we should have tools to allow us to create ways to document ourselves and our development.

Direction: To stimulate desire to document, everyday objects should have ways to input information to a life blog (for not better name for the concept.)

Looking to start with children, I would like to create a series of devices, primarily toys, to stimulate document building process.

I have become fascinated with blogging, documenting events, thoughts and images. There is something wonderful about looking back on ones past to see what has been done and being able to have real points of reference rather then just oral memories. The project will be a system that gives children a platform to build space full of memories, from the infant stages through young childhood, and sometimes further. The idea is that Linus’ blanket also could have been the retainer of the paths Linus took through out his childhood, and not just a security device, if the blanket is going to be with him always why not have it remember events too.

My influences are the life recorder concepts people have been talking about over the years. “Teddy” is one idea that Donald Norman talks about in one of his books; this is the core platform that has been mentioned when talking about my idea. Yet the idea really stems from my love for relationship between Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin and Linus and his Blanket. The look, for the doll, at the moment, come from a character I have doodled for years and has a considerable likeness to the Ugly Dolls found in stores today.

How many times have you wanted to find a picture from your childhood, but couldn’t? I want my project to make people think about how their memories of childhood is stored. People do and should think about their history and what they will leave behind. If parents start their children off with a product like Puffle, the child will hopefully want to continue documenting and memorizing their daily life.
And they will enjoy having something to look back on as well as future
generations.

There are many aspects to this project I have planned out: I am aiming high with a hope to complete all to 85% of the product’s system with a fully working prototype.

There are three elements:
The Puffle doll with it technology
The Blogging server/platform
The Parents’ monitoring station side
A Puffle linking to the cell phone

Posted by dimitri at 02:43 AM | Comments (0)