Michael Voong HCI Researcher @ Birmingham University

Social Proximity for Urban Tranquility

Do you ever feel like you want to escape the familiarity of your everyday trails and hang out somewhere you’ve never been before? Jabberwocky is a project developed by members of the Urban Atmospheres group within Intel Research Berkeley. Users download a small program onto the MIDP 2.0-capable phone which is basically a Bluetooth proximity scanner. The program constantly scans the surroundings for Bluetooth IDs and logs them. The key motivation for the project is for people that want to get an idea of familiarity in a given situation, whether it’s walking down the street or participating in a social meeting. By logging the presense of peoples’ pervasive identity cards - their mobile phone, the visualisation gives you an idea of the ‘urban scent’ that is present around you.

I like the simplicity of the project - the way that you can use it without getting everyone to participate in any social networks or download any particular application. That’s great! But, such a system is interesting to study, but is it anything more than a toy? Is such a thing a human need? The more I read about these physical proximity applications the more I think that such ideas have been ‘over-done’; the projects are boring. They seem to deal with two things: making social networking easier by incorporating an idea of context inherent in proximity sensing, or solve some strange feeling of "closeness" you get by often being around certain social groups. There’s plenty of scope for a ‘killer application’ that comes from the root of identifying a real need. If only it became clear to me. Oh well, these kind of ideas happen after naps…

I think this project could be vaguely useful if you could tag periods of time, eg. “HospitalityClub meeting” or something, then this tag is stored with the Bluetooth IDs seen during this period. When one of the Bluetooth IDs are seen again (after the period had ended), you are alerted and the tag and date is displayed. Then you look around, try to recognise their face and proudly tell them “wow, I met you at..”, thus making them feel pleased that you remember them so well when you probably didn’t even talk to them the first time - and starting another conversation, and perhaps making another friend. Much better than “hey babe, I’ve seen you around”, anyway.

I think mobile phones should start putting infrared capabilities back into phones. “But infrared is crap, you have to keep both the devices pointing at each other in order to transfer data!”. Exactly. So maybe just swap Bluetooth IDs over infrared, then automatically offer your business card to anyone you successfully connect with. Because at the moment nobody actually uses Bluetooth to swap contact details - it takes much longer to scan for the device (if they’ve even got Bluetooth enabled), accept the transfer, etc. than to just tell them your number and get them to give you a dropped call. Which is a shame, because I can include all my contact details (website, MSN, etc.) in my business card, which makes in much easier for them to get in touch - which hopefully makes it more likely that they well. Okay, so maybe girls never call me for other reasons, but you take my point.

Oh, and if somebody from Nokia is reading, I’d love to work for you.

(and obviously a bonus of swapping Bluetooth IDs and business cards is that when you spot this ID again, you can generate an alert and provide all their details, eg. their name)