Scenarios
From MediaFranca
Contents |
Types of Scenarios
| Recreational | Logistical | Political | Poetical | |
| Human connections? | Sharing and enjoying moments | Gathering information Coordinating action | Corrdinating action Sharing points of views, transcending the digital (face-to-face) | Sharing expressions and appreciations |
| Existing cases | MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Role-playing Online Game) | Friends need to meet, they leave messages for others to find the meeting place Organizing events and summoning people Indicate special places, provide with additional information. | Raise issues: mobloggers and citizen journalism Organize people to action. flash mobs TxtMobs Deliberative Democracy registering public evidence for building a shared memory | self expression and life traces locative media as art pieces community memory, space as a memory palace |
| Needs to be addressed | lack of fun and serendipity of urban living | Lack of coordination within a community Low visibility of opportunities for connection (neighbors that share interests) | Lack of engagement and community awareness Low visibility of community issues Lack of power for raising issues and becoming a heard voice within a community | the lack of tools the lack of the ability to "point out", be an index |
Personas
Travis
He's a 17-year-old freshman in electrical engineering. He and he has made 3 friends and they go everywhere together. He's really busy with school work and he feels disconnected with the world outside campus. Although he's under a lot of pressure, he's handling the situation pretty well.
Goals:
- Meet more people like him and engage in different activities friendship (sports)
- find a girlfriend (Kathy)
- get to know the city outside campus
Sonja
She's a 21-years-old history student deeply interested in the city's environmental issues, as she became a member of Sierra Club a non profit organization where she participates as a volunteer since 2004. She started a blog 2 years ago were she posts her thoughts and ideas related with Pittsburgh's parks, and pictures from the different walking and hiking trails. Recently, she started posting about urban planning issues related with the preservation natural places and other environmental issues.
Goals:
- Stay informed about what's going on in the city
- Advocate in favor of endangered (and valuable) places
- Extend her interest on neighborhoods to other people
Owen
He's a 24 years old and he's staring a bicycle company with 2 more friends. He participates in an activist movement called Critical Mass and he also volunteers at Free Ride. He's very busy working during the week but he always saves enough time to participate as volunteer and share with his friends. He likes riding his bike in the countryside and he's also interested in international politics, although he prefers not to discuss too much about that with his friends.
Goals:
- Promote bicycle use in the community
- Know more people to hang out with
- Coordinate better with his folks from Critical Mass and try to do more with them
Scenarios of use
Just before Classes
- Travis just left his dorm heading to his first morning class. He usually leaves a little bit early just for having the time for his coffee. He loves those extra 5 minutes he has from strolling around campus enjoying his coffee while listening to some music.
- While buying his coffee, his cellphone vibrated. It was a message from his pal Jeff that was apparently hanging there from last night.
- The message was an audio recording:
Hey Travis, you should check this student meeting today at lunch at the main auditorium. Its about HIV, or global health and stuff..., I know you don't care too much about it but Kathy is gonna be there organizing a a round table or something... so it's your chance. Oh, and btw, could you bring me a coffee to class? Thanks! - Then he heads to the auditorium just to check more about this meeting. When he gets there, he uses his cellphone to check for posts nearby, as he interacts with it as if he were taking a picture.
- He notices a bunch of post icons clustered around the main entrance. By taping with his finger over them, they expand to show the title, author and media format.
- He selects a post from the Student Body about the lecture. The post is available to him through his friend Greg, who is in his programming class and belongs to the Student Body group.
- The post is an invitation to participate in a student group for Global Health issues and invites to today's lecture about HIV in the student community. Travis confirms his attendance to the lecture. Travis then subscribes to the HIV awareness group, by doing this, he can access and create posts for this group. Then he browses group members and finds Kathy.
--Sweet!, he says to himself.
Displayed Features
- Passive/Active post accessing.
- Passive: when someone else leaves a post to you and sticks like a burr.
- Active: browsing with the camera for posts
- Custom templates (Posts with questionaries, confirmations, different types of media, etc).
- Group subscription
Raising Issues
- It's Saturday morning and Sonja is waking by the river shore, as a way of taking advantage of the wonderful day. She's on her way to the Strip District to buy some groceries because she's having guests for lunch.
- Her cellphone vibrates: it's a notification from the Sierra Club, an environmentalist group she belongs to. This notification was triggered because she was passing by a certain place where a recent post has been placed. She interacts with her device as she were taking a picture and notices a post icons by a group of bushes, about 50 ft. away.
- The post consists of a picture of trash and a voice recording describing the situation:
It seems that we have a new illegal dumping zone, you can see lots of trash bags and empty boxes here. We need to raise this issue in the next city council meeting
the post was a week old. - Sonja decides to check the place closer and notices that now there is more trash than what is shown in the picture: there are bunch of car tires and empty paint cans.
- Sonja takes a picture of the place for making a quick reply to the thread (that was based on a Sierra Club environmental report template[1]), adding an audio description:
These tires weren't there last week so the situation is getting worse. We need to take care of this immediately before it's too late - 2 hours later, on her way back home she passes the same place and notices that the thread has a new post by John:
Don't worry Sonja, I've contacted one of my friends at the city council and they'll send a truck during the week. He told me that they might even put a sign indicating the penalty fee for leaving trash there.
Displayed Features
- Custom group template
- Multi-publishing
Empowering Agency
- It's the last Friday of the month and Owen is sitting on the grass with a couple of friends, waiting for the rest of the Critical Mass
[2] participants to show up.
- He uses his cellphone to search for a post nearby and he notices a Critical Mass Gathering post. He accesses it and subscribes to the thread as a bulletin board in audio format.
- The ride starts and the mass starts moving east, it seems that this time there is no predefined itinerary.
- A few blocks later, Owen's cellphone vibrates; its a message from the CM thread:
Ok folks, we are going to make it left at Craig and head to Liberty, from there we'll head to the point a do a little mess there. Ah! and please remember to let the buses roll - Later, Owen feels a little bit tired but he wants to enjoy with his friends a little longer, so he sends a message to them:
Hey guys, what about a couple of beers? let's head to the north side and meet at the Hi-tops in 10 minutes - Later that night, Owen is finally back home. He checks the CM post on his computer and notices all the pictures and videos that the participants left attached as continuations of the thread. Its nice to review the ride again from different points of views.
Displayed Features
- Custom post template
- Conference audio thread or audio BB
Old Scenarios
1: support a petition
It is 8.30am and Travis is entering the UC, after having a quick breakfast. Before his class, he has time to check what's going on around campus, so he seats on a couch from the main for finishing his coffee, then accesses his mobile device. He notices that there is a huge [3] post advocating for the Iraq anti-escalation movement in the US senate. He decides to support the petition by signing his name to it. He clicks in the icon for support and the cellphone submits his credentials [4] to the post.
Following these idea:
- Coordinating consumer action
2: expanding the peer network
Now, since he is subscribed to the post he's able to browse the listing of people that have already signed. He decided to add Sonja, the author of the post to his own network. He marks her as "friend". That means he'll now be able see all of her other public posts. Also, the way in which posts are filtered and made relevant to him will change because his community filtering profile has changed as well[5].
3: documenting space
Later that evening, while sitting at his computer at he dorm, he grabs his cellphone and records a 360' video of his room (while turning on his chair). He then posts this video outside of his room asking for suggestions on how should he re-organize the furniture layout. The next evening, while returning to his room, he notices 2 responses. Both of them are 360' videos of other people's rooms. He's very happy to see the other room layouts and also adds them to his contacts. He then realizes the one of them had already added him as a contact too[6].
4: creating personal narratives
Its Saturday early morning and finally Owen is free to go with his friends for a ride. They told him that today they would be exploring a different bicycle route at Laurel Highlands. When they arrive there, their mobile device notifies them that there's something important to check. A post at the starting point of the trail warns them to carry enough water which they can purchase in a store nearby, because water refills are few and far between each other during the ride. Since they are experienced bicyclists, they had enough water for the day. After their ride is over, Owen decides to reply that post with a video recording of a very challenging spot in the trail which he passed through with his friends. he comments his experiences during the ride and also warns others of the rocks and poor quality in certain parts of the trail. He also invites his viewers to join him every last Friday of the month at the Carnegie Library, for the Critical Mass[7] event.
5: coordinating the mob
It's the last Friday of the month and Owen is standing with his bike at Forbes Ave. with Bellefield (by the dinosaur) waiting for the gang to show up. They are supposed to start the ride at 5.30 pm. In the meantime, he activates a post summoning all Critical Mass participants. As the people start arriving, the access the post and subscribe for the ride[8]. By doing this, Owen --as the initiator of the summoning-- is able to simultaneously call everyone (or leave recorded messages). He wants to have everybody coordinated because last month some Critical Mass participants where harassed by the police.
Notes
- ↑ For this post she only needs a picture and a voice recording describing the situation. The post is simultaneously published on site and on the group's blog.
- ↑ Critical Mass is a bike ride typically held on the last Friday of every month in cities around the world where bicyclists and, less frequently, skateboarders, roller bladers, roller skaters and other self-propelled commuters take to the streets en masse.
- ↑ The size will be determined by the amount of people supporting the post. The more popular, the more visible.
- ↑ Only the unnecessary information will be transfered. Although his profile is much more detailed, in this case he's submitting what the post requires from him: name, address, state and ZIP.
- ↑ What Travis sees as relevant is determined by:
- He's reciprocal friend network (With different deggrees, such as family, friends, classmates (or colleagues), etc)
- He's subscribed users (unidirectional relationship)
- He's subscribed keywords (or tags)
- Proportionally popular. (In rural areas, where there are fewer posts, they would appear visible, even if they don't fit in any of the above rules. On the other hand, in highly dense areas the filtering criteria would need to be much more strict, following the inverse pyramid model. Maybe there is a numeric limit of viewable posts.
- ↑ Reciprocal contacts are priorized over unidirectional ones.
- ↑ Critical Mass is a monthly celebration which brings attention to alternative forms of transportation. By taking to the streets in a mass of bicycle riders, they hope to remind people that bikes are an efficient means of transport, and that bikers deserve a place on the roads. Pittsburgh Website
- ↑ This is an augmented version of TXTmobs, a project from The Institute of Applied Autonomy
