Final Video.

Final notes

The PoPPoP Concept and Design

                               

In OzCHI2012 Challenge, we have observed various phenomena, appearing in our society nowadays. We come from Finland, amazing place full of cellphones, as an example, where people are physically so far away from each other that they are basically born with cellphones in their hands. Just imagine that you get lost in the middle of forest, in -25C and it gets dark in few hours. Without cellphone, you would get frozen.  Climate conditions here force people to adapt, employ smart technologies and reliable networks. Finland is the best country with ICT and you can see meaningful design everywhere.  However, human-computer interaction here has developed so well, that humans sometimes forget to communicate like humans.

Concept of PoPPoPs

Instead of direct asking for a help, people rather start searching through the internet, read reviews of other people and making long decision process, before they really act. For example, this way they plan travels, buy a new television, or just decide which juice may taste better. All these situations are full of human-human interaction, however, people start to rely on the technology rather than asking for a help. What is the reason of these phenomena? And, more importantly, how to avoid it and promote the natural human-human collaboration?

A design of the PoPPoP system focuses on human-computer interaction and enhances human-human communication. Our system provides visual clues (balloon), recommends topics for a talk and thus, crosses the borders of shyness, languages difficulties, or cultural diversities. We hypothesize that when people around you know, what you are searching for, what your intention is, or just if you need help, they will stop being shy and start to talk.

We envision a system using actual technologies, like cellphones, desktops and laptops, as well as proposed augmented-reality (AR) glasses.

The PoPPoP application is based on synchronized cloud of social networks and introduces two distinct whiteboard concepts: private and public. The private whiteboard is designed just for you, your friends and family, for example, when you need to continue the conversation anytime. Just open your PoPPoP and talk. Usually your closest friends will respond and help you solve what’s on your mind.

The previous private virtual whiteboard is using social computing, for example Google+ Circles or Facebook, and our aim is to extend this paradigm using location-based recommendations, visible to people around you, in the public virtual whiteboard. The public whiteboard is not using the results of random search engines, but builds on actual knowledge of people in your close environment. Therefore, even a passing-by stranger can suggest some solution, and this solution will fit you more than the one, based on worldwide anonymous reviews. Our design benefits from human knowledge sharing and promotes human-human interaction and collaboration through the technology.

PoPPoP design and interaction

We have designed the PoPPoP as a mobile application, which creates your personal cloud, as illustrated in Figure 1, synchronizes with your other clouds (for example, Google+ circles, Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging) and allows you to create your private virtual whiteboard. When interacting with your friends, you just create a message (balloon) in the application and send it to the whiteboard. Your balloon immediately appears on the whiteboard in your friends’ devices. What is beneficial about the personal whiteboard is the smart balloon history.

Using the smart history, your ideas will not appear as random anymore. The balloons will always have connection to your prior experience and your friends will see your overall train of thoughts. This feature enhances human-human interaction and collaboration since it provides context information otherwise missing in the remote conversation.  

Figure 1: All the devices, sharing the PoPPoP cloud, adapted from [1].

The whiteboard is your private space, thus, it is projected in your cellphone, desktop, or in the AR glasses, without fear that you accidentally publish something personal. However, sometimes you want to present your small-talk topics aloud. With a single gesture in the PoPPoP, drag and drop your balloon out of your private space, make it public. The balloon message appears visually as a balloon tag above your head. Collocated users of the PoPPoP application will automatically see what is on your mind. What makes PoPPoP different from other recommendation systems is that the application shows your status only to physically close people and covers small area of the shop, for example.

The system detects public balloons of the people around you, at actual time and actual place and thus, you are asking and receiving only the needed and fresh information. Finally, other unknown people can see your public balloon, come and talk to you == pop-up your balloon.

Response to PoPPoPs

The PoPPoP is your personal environment, which you can share with people, who you choose. The application is platform independent, running on your desktop, cellphone, and tablet and also projecting in you augmented-reality glasses. Thus, you can share your topics just right in time and in place. Sending a message with your actual attitude, ideas, or a balloon with your issues enables people to understand you and start talking. However, sometimes nobody is just around, at the first sight.

In this moment, when your personal space is not large enough for a help, you just publish your question mark and wait for a response. The system is location-based and only people in you close environment will see your “balloon”, come to you and start talking. Anyone with the AR glasses or the cellphone connects to the cloud and sees the balloon above your head. This type of hints, especially in countries like Finland, where the general small talk is not preferred, is missing.   

Finally, the balloons lead to the wisest hints because the concrete and personal advice serves you better than answer of the machine.

Who will suggest the warmer winter shoes?

Vogue or a wise Lapp granny, walking in the snow?

Promotion Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh4ct2bR6xU

References:

[1] http://www.saferinternet.cz/novinky/1587-3   

Authors:

Alexandru Gegiuc, Hana Vrzakova, Hooryeh Afkari, Shahram Eivazi and Tersia Gowases

With special thanks to our hacker:

Harri Karhu

Midnight post...!

It's now midnight [Finnish time] and we are still here 

Work in progress

Work in progress? Time for a nap:)

Smartis presenting PoPPoP

Problems are like balloons..they are hanging over your head, you cannot get rid of them unless you pop-them up. We expect that our mind cleaning application will have a huuuge group of fans, even with cheerleaders! Thus, we created also jumping slogan for them:) Jump with us!

Don't Be Loon!

Do Balloon!

And Pop-them-Up!

PoPPoP...PoPPoP...PoPPoP

A title INVENTED!

Creating a catchy name seems easy, isn’t it? Especially if you talk the whole day about balls, bubbles and circles. Just imagine! Today, we are presenting you THE BALLS! Ok, here is our train of titles. We hope you appreciate the final change:)


Balls ... Circles ... Bubbles ... Balloons (yeah,very original) => Balloons? Really...ok, let's pop-them-out ...Balloon Popper... Problem-Popper ... Problem-Solver ... Problemer ... Popper ... Party Popper? (too much of poppers) ….after that we invented the best tongue-twister ever!

ProbablyProblemsForProblemmer

(repeat 5x)

...ok, after the we just continued with the example of the cheese and juusto...and invented more creepy titles:

... The CreepyGuyWithGlasses ... The CheesGuy ... The CheesyGuy ... creepy enough, isn’t it?

ok, back to balloons:... Ball00ns ... Balloons (at least grammatically correct) ... B41100N5...hackers were visiting us:)

...so something more..

...Floating Ideas...Floaters...White Poppers...Social Poppers...Pop-ups...PopUps...Pop-Pop...
..and the winner is:

PoPPoP

I'm an alien I'm a legal alien (making a prototype)

I don't drink coffee I take tea my dear
I like my toast done on one side
And you can hear it in my accent when I talk
I'm an Englishman in ...Finland

Have you ever though what is the biggest problem for exchange students when they visit a foreign country? They Are Shy! They are soo  scared to ask questions! Especially, if they meet some scary tribesman! And it is actually stressful even for poor savages! Some barbaric exchange student starts talking in the language far away from the school English. They are so brave not to run away!

Our novelty application overcomes shyness of and language imperfections between people, cultures and nations. Just imagine, that you know that the nightmarish girl, starring on the dairy isle, is just lost! She speaks only English..and there is nothing like a "CHEESE"...and you can help her.  

So what now? How to know, that people need some help? So Let them pop-up their problems.


A protoype is on the way.. 

PS: the blogger is incredibly slow..guys, how can you write with this??