BitBusyNow: Making the most of passive mobile devices.

I have been looking at a  lot of Augmented Reality (AR) stuff with James Alliban recently, on a project we are working on together and testing out a lot of AR stuff, mainly through a mobile interface.

The thing which always seems to me to be a major hurdle with this sort of technology ( I may well be wrong about this) is the fact that you always need a device to do AR stuff.  Someone must have a camera enabled device in order to instigate an AR event, and even though the  AR  software lays digital data across a live environment, its  still not real because you still need to view the environment through the lens of the device thats creating the AR event.

This sort of disconnect is most stark with a mobile device, where I find it somewhat frustrating. As the mobile is so easy to move and its size means it doesn’t dominate your field of vision, you can easily see at the same time, the AR View projected onto the device and the real scene that is being recorded by the AR software. The animated character, or game, or whatever, I can see on my Device, is plainly not there when i simple move me focus away form the device to real life and see that the object doesn't really exist after all.

Anyway, the point is to me, the fact you need to insert a device between yourself and the scene your viewing and watch that live view, translated through a device, always seemed like a bridge to far. Why does the device have to interrupt the interaction so dramatically? 

This got me thinking about having a device passively perform a function, so subtly that you don’t even notice its there. You set it it to perform a given set of functions on your behalf and then just let it go and act as your agent within a certain set of parameters. This isn’t a new idea, people have been using agents for a while now. However, as most mobile interactions seem to require you entire focus  ( notice the amount of iZombies wandering the streets making a call, or interacting with an app)I was thinking is there a way to make the device have some sort of agency to do things even when you not doing anything. 

This is where the “Bit Busy Now” seems to slot. Its not really an app that generates anything for you within the app itself. Yo simply just set it and leave. However, what it does do is  help modify the behavior of those around you for more positive outcomes for yourself. The idea behind the app is that office environments are  fundamentally distracting. People have the ability to wander up and bother you, regardless of what you are doing partly because they think their task supersedes all others in terms of importance, but also because they have no idea how important the thing you;re working on is.

“Bit Busy Now” attempts to solve this by using a symbol traffic light system to display to others you’re willingness to be distracted. Depending on the level of work you’re doing you can set the phone to tell others if you’re willing to be distracted or not. Red to mean “do not disturb; Green to mean “ready to chat if needed)  The phone, then displays your status on the screen (over-riding sleep functions)  and people coming up to your desk can see at an instance what your status is and if they can disturb you.

It’s a passive and non-distracting sign for both the user and others in the environment as tis a simple colour. However, it is its also unmistakable (unless you’re placed you phone screen side down). The thing I also like about it is  that is uses your phone for something productive during its ‘down time”, when its simply not doing anything other than waiting to interrupt you when a call comes through.


Conclusions? I like the fact that it doesn’t do too much, its a simply function that solves  common problem so as  a design solution it has merit. But I quite like the idea of empowering devices to act on my behalf in the real world. I think there is some really good headway to make there. I also love the idea of not over-loading something with functionality,and hope to see what interesting things happen when you program small discrete units of functionality and then daisy chain them together...”bit busy now” linked with “google calendars” with “growl notifications”......

Links

James Alliban: http://jamesalliban.wordpress.com/

Augmented Reality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality