Teen speak

I love this skit mostly because it looks like they overheard a conversation between 2 young people in a bus and decided to put it in a completely different context. Does this sound like a conversation you’d be having?

2 comments August 21st, 2008

Radiation art

If you’ve got your ears to the ground, you’ll know that cell phone radiation is a hot topic at the moment. Pingponging between what scientists say and what the mobile providers say, it’s hard to make up your mind on the issue. Regardless of all this, the fact is that cell phones do emit a lot of radiation.

I thought it might be more interesting to take a different approach and think about how you can raise awareness about the levels of emission of your favorite piece of technology.

Cell phone disco does just that. This project by Ursula Lavrencic and Auke Touwslager is a large wall with electro-magnetic sensitive lights allow you to draw with your cell phone and interact with this field of emissions in a very tangible way.

That’ll make you think twice about staying on the phone all day long.

2 comments August 17th, 2008

Link love

I’m starting to put together a list of interesting sites / blogs / books and references that relate to mobility, young people, marketing, advertising, psychology…etc.

If you have any ideas, suggest them in the comments, they might end up in the sidebar of Shift6!

Update: Here is my list so far:

Pasta & Vinegar by Nicolas Nova
Textually by Emily Turrettini
Future Perfect by Nokia’s Jan Chipchase
Putting People First by Experientia
Younghee Jung’s blog
danah boyd’s blog
Communities Dominate Brands by Alan Moore

2 comments August 14th, 2008

Socially mobile

Social behaviour is inherent to people with phones you would think, but the internet is stretching how we understand social behavior. Being social is now closely linked to being part of a network, an online community, instead of just being accessible. It’s an active rather than passive attitude to our social relationships. But of course these interactions need to be designed, as more and more people wish to access their favorite social app (see Tech News World article) not an easy task for designers as screen sizes and resolution vary on each handset.

Some designers have avoided that problem by designing for the iPhone, the mobile industry’s newest and brightest kid on the block. Functionality-wise, it should be far from being an important competitor on the “average” phone market, but the iPhone understands that the integration of phone and internet. It understands that being social also means watching movies, playing games, checking email or Facebook, using Skype, sending pictures to Flickr. The good old days of playing Snake in the Tube are definitely over.

Additionally, should you be unhappy about what’s out there, you can develop your own application and sell it online, lowering the barrier to creatives around the world. (I wonder if New media courses will develop Creative Mobile Development courses soon).

I also wonder if this model could be applied to what Blyk offers and perhaps change the distribution paradigm. What if it offered the ability for someone to develop their own advertising content, submitting it back to the brand and if accepted have it distributed out through the network and get a share? This would definitely get the creative crowd excited.

Add comment August 14th, 2008