Student Social Organizer Watch Prototype

Here is an image of our paper prototype that we've come up with:

Each of the screens is activated by actions defined below:

1. Bob is near - when another student with similar interests (clubs, societies, department,course...) comes up close the student is alerted.
2. Paired - when two students shake hands and have the same device this screen verify's that both students are now friends.
3. Time - this is shown by default.
   
4. Event - lets the student decide if they want to attend an event that one of their friends is attending.
   
5. Syncing - the watch updates new friends and obtains groups and events that the student may want to join/attend.
6. Settings - general watch settings.
   

An overview of the "Student Social Organizer Watch"

From our suvery feedback and initial brainstorm ideas we have decided to create a device to help students organize social events and make friends.

Our idea will take the connectivity of a social network (as these are currently very popular with students) and the familarity of a watch.

Why a watch and not a more feature rich/complex device?

• A watch is a familiar device to all students.
  
• Limited resources and simple user interface are perfect for displaying all that we require.
  
• A watch is also convenient to carry around, much more so then a phone.
  

Choice of social network
Facebook is choosen for the following reasons:

• It presents a simple and effective way of getting people to organize an event.
• It was the primary communication tool used to inform people about our survey and so most students are already familiar with its features.
  

So how will this work?
A quick rundown of how the student social organizer watch will work:

1. The student wears watch which in it's normal state tells the time.
2. When the student shakes hands with another with the same watch on it transfers the user's info over between both watches. They are then "securely paired". This ensures that both users are identified next time they go past each other.
   
3. When the user is at their home computer the devices sync over bluetooth. The app also sends over a list of subscribed events to the watch which are kept in the form of alerts.
   
4. Students can then select whether they want to join groups and events that their newly paired up friend(s) are on.
   

The survey also pointed out the following:

• Students find it hard to keep friends together when out.
  
• Students also find it quite hard getting home.
  

Our solutions:

• When a student goes to an event, any friends that are also at that same event will be alerted if within range and kept within a radar, if one person moves out the others are then alerted.
  
• When getting home from an event, the student will be presented with a buddy list which contains available friends within the bluetooth range and at the event. The student will alert their home buddies by selecting a screen and alerting their friends.
  

Devices taken a step further with cool effects

The videos below show examples of popular devices (a mobile phone and games console) that have been extended with interesting results.

Synchronised shaking connects gadgets
From the Youtube's New Scientist channel the following video shows how 2 mobile phones can be linked together by shaking them in synchronization:



There is a paper over here. This could be used to validate users e.g. friends or possibly even to pay for items (events, stuff around uni, books...) in a very simple manner.

The key to working this is using an acceloremeter, so extending this to a keyring or other small item could allow phones and other devices to be paired up with other objects securly. This is probably a good extension of the student friend finding idea.

Tracking Fingers with the Wii Remote
The following video shows how a wii can be modified to produce a Minority Report style interface.

If you haven't seen the film the user interface is pretty much like the ipod touch/iphone when viewing webpages except that the device in the film is a clear pane (like the tv) and is operated by two hands. Other products using touch in an intelligent way include the Microsoft touch table and Adobe wall.

I think students new to university would quite enjoy the idea of operating their tv or other visual device in a more expressive manner.

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics.....

Well the results from the first survey are in, we managed to get a total of 19 respondents (18 electronic, 1 written) so a big thank you to everybody who took part.

Now for some analysis. The original list of questions is shown below, along with a chart that gives a condensed summary of the responses received. Students were asked to rate their responses to questions on a five point scale (Very Easy, Easy, Average, Hard, Very Hard) and I took a tally of the number of "Hard" or "Very Hard" responses to identify issues we could target our project at.

Relevant Questions:
Q2) Getting hold of official university information?
Q3) Finding your way around campus?
Q4) Getting hold of course information?
Q5) Getting hold of student union information?
Q6) Find out about the clubs and societies you wanted to join?
Q7) Keeping in touch with your university friends?
Q8) How did you find studying?
Q9) How did you find revising?
Q10) When going out with friends, how easy or difficult was it to choose a venue?
Q11) How easy or difficult was it to organize a night out?
Q12) How easy or difficult was it to keep with your group of friends on a regular night out?
Q13) How did you find getting home?
Q14) How did you find grocery shopping?
Q15) How do you find obtaining university essentials?

Further Experiences:

"The information services (library) site is very useful for academic matters."

"Difficult as university residences are off-campus, so made things a bit harder re: going into town for nights out."

"Finding food was easy, maintaining a healthy lifestyle with no experience of it is difficult."

"It is hard for me to give answers to some of the questions for example about student union. I know there is one but I've never even tried to look for any information about it............."

Comments:

I find the results of the survey quite interesting, as someone who has been at university for a while now I hadn't expected such a skew towards the social aspects of university, but of course for a new student these matters are of utmost importance, long before thoughts of exams, revision and actually doing any work!

We can see that a lot respondents (proportionally speaking) had trouble in form or another on nights out. There also seems to be a difficultly barrier when it comes to obtaining information concerning clubs, societies and the student union.

The subject of revising was a problem to some respondents, but to a lesser extent than perhaps I had initially thought especially considering the majority of respondents listed themselves as either "graduate" or "working" I wondered whether we would see a skew towards this considering revision and exams would be freshest in the minds of these respondents.

We can now ponder these results and their implications on our ideas.

Online survey now up

Our survey was placed up last week and so far we've received a handful of responses.

The questions contained are quite simple and should give us an indication of the sort of idea we should be looking at rather then how to design such ideas.

The url for the survey can be found here:
http://www.joe-wong.co.uk/limesurvey/index.php?sid=57814&lang=en

Student communication ideas

Student job finder
The student job finder is aimed at helping new students find a job from one source rather then several. For new students most jobs can be placed into 2 main categories: Part time and Voluntary.

Retail provides many part time student jobs mostly due to the ease of getting a job however there are more options open for students. An Example can be tutoring where a student is using their existing skills to earn money.

Voluntary jobs include those where a student would probably want to help out, especially for societies and charities. Both types of jobs can be found on email lists, websites and through word of mouth.

As the number of job sources increases the breadth of the search a student has to do to look for a fitting job can be quite large especially for those students initially arriving at university.

Student friend finder
The aim of the friend finder is to help students find their friends/other like minded people.

The phone a familiar instant communication device is almost common to every student. However the phone usually costs credit/money to make calls and texts and can take a while to find out if everyone is going out. You've also got to have a number for your friend.

The social network profile e.g. facebook, myspace, hi5... are all populated by vast numbers of students even before they come to university. Social networks provide very useful profile information and features such as access to profile 24 hours a day, creating events, groups... The disadvantages of social networks are lack of instant communication and a reliance on an internet connection which is usually a computer at home. Although facebook does have a mobile site, I've not known anyone who interfaces with their site in this way.

The student friend finder device merges the two ideas by using the adhoc ability of a phone's bluetooth connectivity (could also be zigbee/wifi or something else) to find other users running the software and looking up matching bits of information. The friend finder will only alert the user when a successful match has been found e.g. both students are looking for "computer science" students.

They may then each receive a message (this depends on their settings) alerting them about this new user. If the user is already one of their friends then it may just alert them or do nothing.

Disadvantages may include:

• Stalking if a user has too much profile information displayed, system could warn user before hand.
• Popular users could have too many requests to handle, a cap may be placed on requests within a specific time period.
  

Drinking and Socialising Ideas.....

A lot of the ideas that came out of the initial brainstorming session tended to revolve around drinking and socialising, which as we all know can be a big part of the university experience. Here are some undeveloped ideas that revolve around this particular theme:

The "how did I get home?" device: An unfortunate question that I'm sure a large number of students have asked themselves, they key idea behind this would be a watch or pda type device with built in screen and gps, that would record the path and places you visited at the street and pavement level, which could be replayed the next day to illustrate just how drunk you where the night before. However I think the novelty of such an idea would be short lived and not enough to carry a device on it's own, but could be interesting as part of a more comprehensive device.

Party Finder: This was primarily envisaged for people in halls or residence to keep track of where their friends currently are so they can traverse from one party to another. The idea would be some form of social networking phone application with a list of all party goers and which bar or venue they are currently at. So one could check on their phone where all their fellow party finder users are and either join them or get together.

This could also be useful if you are not accepted to a bar and to join some friends and you want to find some other friends to join so that the night is not spoiled.

The liver & wallet saviour: Binge drinking can be a particular hazard for students young or old, and it was proposed that it would be good if there was actually some way of keeping track or the amount of alcohol consumed in order to alert the user when the amount of alcohol consumed had reached unsafe levels.

Maybe an application for a mobile phone or pda where one could chose/enter the drink or round they had purchased, and give an alert when the amount purchased reached dangerous levels.
After thinking about this I realised that the majority of people would not be disciplined or inclined to manually enter the details each time.

This led me to think about a slightly different idea, again involving a watch but requiring some hardware at the point of purchase. The user would wear a watch that would perform the usual functions of a watch, but would have some form of radio frequency tag built in, so that when the user purchases a drink or round at the bar as he/she moves their hand over the bar to hand over the money, the till encodes in the watch the value and number of drinks.

This would serve the following useful purposes:

• In groups of drinkers who typically buy rounds it could show whose turn it is to buy the next round, avoiding the typical drinking argument.
  
• The next day it would illustrate how much was being spent on alcohol. Realising that you may have spent £150+ on alchohol that week for example, would be good non-draconian way of reminding people into curbing their drinking.
  
• The user may also realise they have spent too much midway through a night and be encouraged to slow down.
  
• This may aid retailers in telling when people have had too much if the pre-existing value on the watch could be checked before updating.
  

Either way providing the basic watch functionality is not compromised, and the budget monitoring is unobtrusive, the average student drinker I think would enjoy a way of keeping track of whose round it is, while the spending total gives a "quiet" deterrent to over doing it.