Inspired concepts for the Disappearing Computer
Intimate media involve all those things that people create and collect to store and share personal memories, interests and preferences. Examples include photo albums, diaries, souvenirs, and anything with an attributed a meaning or a value. The ever increasing computerisation of all aspects of personal life has urged the MIME project to search of new design concepts including artifacts and systems. These novelties may promote human experiences that relate to collection, storage and sharing of intimate media. Following a process of scenario and concept design, six concepts were created that may be used in future development of products, services, systems, interactions or technologies. The concepts may contribute to the support or enhancement of the intimate media stories of people's experience. Four out of these six concepts have been further elaborated to be communicated as examples of the MIME experience and to be further implemented as prototypes. These concepts include the Picture Ball, Living Scrap Book, GlowTags and Lonely Planet Listener. The Picture Ball tool facilitates the simple capture and casual browsing of collections of images in order and at random. The Living Scrap Book is a hybrid digital media and paper that allows digital and physical capturing of a journey and printing it into a book. The Lonely Planet Listener serves people to listen to the world from their own home. The GlowTags, a system tags to hint their owner and serve as promts for remembering or storytelling, has already been further developed as an experimental prototype. The storyboards and interaction description of all concepts are available on the MiME public website: http://www.mimeproject.org
