Connectus

Lifestream aggregation and clustering is used as interest extraction, which in turn is combined to generate ambient maps of connectivity projected on the ceiling of a social space. This work provides a compass for social navigation, giving subtle hints of related topics and connectivity to the entire space as you navigate your normal conversations within a room.

Engaze

Since time immemorial, we have judged the character of people using their external characteristics: their clothing, hairstyle, makeup, accent, and so on. With the advent of digital technology, an increasingly detailed image of our identities is now available online. In short, today we represent ourselves both physically and digitally in the world. As yes, these worlds are fairly disjointed, and our representations are likewise disconnected from each other. Just as we choose to dress more or less formally in the real world, we choose to present ourselves online through our metadata in various ways, depending on the perceived audience. However, as technology continues its inexorable progress, these two worlds are collapsing towards convergence. With Engaze, we are attempting to engage the problem of bringing together these two currently disparate representations of a person into convergence in the physical world, and to explore some of the consequences resulting from the encroachment of our virtual representations into the physical world.

Face Zoom

Face Zoom is an interface for exploring zoomable data sets by moving your body. Located the position of the face and scales a set of image and to both become larger and reveal additional information as we get closer. Mimics the natural behavior we have with the world, but provides us the flexibility of representing digital information at any scale transition.

JotWatch: Instant Personal Note-Taking

JotWatch is a device designed with the singular purpose of easing quick note taking on the go. As our days fill with the deluge of microtasks and information fragments that modern life entails, every one of us has had occasions when we wanted to take a quick note, or remember something, or jot down a moment of inspiration. Yet, the task of digitally recording this thought faces enough steps, waits, and changes of context scatter fleeting thoughts and discourage note-taking. The JotWatch is a simple device in a wristwatch form factor that attacks this problem with always-on, fast note-taking ability along with navigation features that allow users to make the most of limited physical real estate.

SpaceMarks

We have seen an explosion of data, but the tools necessary to understand it have not kept pace. Humans have innate spatial memory and spatial organization abilities, but our interfaces into this ever-growing world of data rarely take into account a learned behavior of space. SpaceMarks changes that, creating an intuitive and consistent method to organize, learn, and collaborate with spatially aware resources. It provides a much-needed method for offloading the processing of our information into the world around us.

Theme Stream

We are using intelligent interfaces to spatially organize streams of incoming information into coherent themes. Theme Stream helps us to deal with the ever-increasing streams of information generated around us by applying both supervised and unsupervised machine-learning techniques to the layout of information in the user interface.

Words In Words: MIT Media Lab the Complete Series