More Tablets, More Mobile, More Social. On The Media's The Facebook Show, Adobe's Social 'Metrics, not Myths' Campaign UPDATE2

I've been thinking about giants like Google and Facebook and how they have been slow to figure out how to adapt to the rapid adoption of mobile technologies, such as tablets and smartphones, among their users/ad viewers/consumers.  

Social media marketing is a somewhat uncharted territory, and the landscape is much different from the "push" media environment of television in days past.  

Here is what came across my path today on this topic:

This morning I was delighted to listen to "The Facebook Show". produced by On The Media.  I've embedded it below for your listening pleasure:

THE FACEBOOK SHOW



When I got home, I turned on the TV as I put away groceries, and viewed the Adobe's recent ad, "The Slap", which is meant to convince people that there is a way to measure the ROI  of ad campaigns utilizing social media.  It is part of the Metrics Not Myths series. 


I've embedded a few of the episode below.   (I'd rather see the creative effort focus on an anti-bullying campaign, but that is another story.)

Warning, watching these ads while contemplating digital media consultants and marketing buzzwords might be painful!    

"Today, we launched a brand new marketing campaign we’re calling “Metrics, not myths.” Our approach is to identify top myths about digital marketing that plague brands, agencies, chief marketing officers and CEOs and turn them on their head — with irony, humor, a provocative point of view and proof." - Adobe

The Slap

BS Detector


Buzzwords that get zapped:
Bigger picture, ripple effect, go for the key influencers, at the end of the day, halo effect, brand recognition, fine tune engagements, 360 view of the customer, cross segment synergies, likes, closed loop marketing, search, classification of our brand, SEO, click-through rates, make it go viral.....

Marketing is BS


RELATED
Behind the Scenes of Adobe's 'Metrics, Not Myths' Campaign
Time Moran, CMO.com 10/26/12
In Defense of Marketing
Ann Lewnes, Adobe CMO, 10/23/12
"There has never been a better time to be a marketer."
Adobe Study: Click Here: The State of Online Advertising (pdf) 
"Consumers rate Advertising/Marketing among the least valuable professions."
Metrics not Myths for your webinars
Guillaume Privat, Adobe Connect Blog, 10/25/12
Adobe Marketing Cloud
Webinar:  Creative matters: optimizing Facebook pages for brands (Adobe)
Guidebook:  A creative guide to Facebook Pages: Timeline for Brands (Adobe)
Previous Post: What Happens When Post-Mass Market Goes to Market?  Bob Garfield's insightful video, and more...

Bill Moggridge left our world in September, but his human-centered design spirit lives on!

Bill Moggridge, co-founder of the design company IDEO and director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, passed away on September 8th 2012 of cancer at the age of 69.    If you are familiar with human-centered design, user experience, or design thinking, it is likely that you've have been influenced by Moggridge's work, ideas, and heart!  

I encourage you to take the time to view the following video:


To learn more about Bill Moggridge and his contributions to the people of our world, take a look at the "Remembering Bill" web pages on the Cooper-Hewitt website, and also the Celebrating Bill Moggridge website.

RELATED
Bill Boggridge's presentation to K-12 educators about design:



Bill Moggridge is the author of the following books:

Designing Media (book/DVD/website), featuring interviews with a range of people from various disciplines related to media.

Designing Interactions (book/DVD/website). In this book, Moggridge introduces a number of of people who have influenced interaction design.  It also covers the evolution of the interactive design approaches at IDEO.

TechCrunch Charlotte Highlights: T1 Vision; inTouch Collaborative Software

Yesterday evening I attended a meetup of TechCrunch and Charlotte-area techies, held at the uptown Packard Place entrepreneurial center.  It was jammed-packed with people all abuzz with tech start-up fever, fueled by awesome food provided by Zen Fusion.  Although my main purpose for attending the TechCrunch meet-up was to learn more about innovative technology start-ups in my region, I also was hoping to capture a few shots of interesting people.   I like to keep my eye open for tee-shirt slogans, and one worn by a young gentleman caught my eye, proclaiming that he'd seen the future, and it is in his browser.  On the back of his tee-shirt was a bright HTML5 logo, something that is dear to my heart, as I am moving from HTML4 to HTML5.  He was polite and agreed to pose for a couple of photographs:
 






It turned out that the HTML5 guy was at the TechCrunch event with one of his colleagues from T1 Visions, a social touchscreen solutions company that I've featured previously on this blog.  They caught me up on the growth of this start-up company, which now has 15 employees and has broadened its reach beyond table-top restaurant applications to the healthcare, education, corporate, retail, and broader hospitality sectors.

What I like about table-top systems is that they provide support for "natural user interaction".  It allows for multiple modes of interaction with and presentation of multimedia content.  Over the past several years, these systems have been proven to be useful to a wider range of people and settings.  Interfaces that support touch and gesture interaction are no longer viewed as novelties, given the pervasiveness of touch-phones and tablets and their ease-of-use for most people.

A useful product from T1 Visions is the T1 Collaboration Table. It supports touch-screen interaction and can also handle up to four simultaneously connected laptops.   The table system provides a media viewer that supports sharing of photos across screens, devices, and surfaces.  It also contains a web browser, a presentation viewer, and a whiteboard that is compatible with video conferencing.  The company provides customized applications for its clients.   In the Charlotte area, some of the tables can be found in restaurants, such as the Mellow Mushroom, Cowfish, and Harpers.  A few were recently installed in the Atkins library at UNC-Charlotte, to support group-work among students.

To learn more about what T1 Visions has to offer, take a few minutes to view the following videos and follow the links at the end of this post!






Demonstration of how the collaboration table can work within a business environment:


Demonstration of the T1VISION touch wall:

RELATED
T1 Visions Gallery
T1 Visions: Social Touchscreen Solutions
Interactive tabletops bring people together
Marty Minchin, Charlotte Observer, South Charlotte News, 2/20/12
Interactive Technology in the Carolinas: T-1 Visions Update

NOTE:
TechCrunch is a technology media group founded in 2005 that focuses on innovative technologies.  This summer, a group of TechCrunchers are visiting cities in the south that were previously not under their radar, such as Savannah and my home region, Charlotte, N.C.   The Charlotte TechCrunch meetup was held on Wednesday, July 11, 2012.  I plan to devote a few more blog posts to share what I learned.

Quick Post: Media Facades and Luminous Tweets (Video featuring Thomas Schielke)

I am fascinated by interactive large displays in public places, "urban screens" and the convergence of architecture and technology, especially media facades, and am happy to share a video of a presentation of Thomas Schielke to a group at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.  Thomas Schielke is a German architect known for his work in the area of architectural lighting and media facades. In the presentation, Thomas talks about how new technologies are influencing what he calls "urban branding", and also provides an overview of related history.  If this is an area that interests you, take the time to view the video!  

Below is a summary about the presentation taken from TheHavardGSD YouTube site:

"Brands strive worldwide for distinctive visual identities in the urban landscape. At night they rely on luminous messages ranging from conventionally illuminated signs and billboards up to dynamic luminous architecture for story telling. Therefore, media facades have turned into a fascinating medium to create an architectural image in the nocturnal city. Some brands use guerrilla lighting projections for temporary installations to subversively transform urban spaces. Other companies equip their flagship stores with large LED pixel screens for high-resolution images or they consider the building façade as an interface for more artistic solutions. Often video screens appear as decorated elements competing for attention with traditional commercial billboards. Here media facades have become an interesting alternative to establish a more sophisticated design language for merging the dynamic content with the building. Whereas some luminous facades appear as monumental monologues repeating a fixed animation daily, some installations even allow people to interact with the building to receive enlightening responses. Thereby, the consumer becomes part of the urban marketing strategy to shape a vivid and progressive brand identity. The lecture by the German architect Thomas Schielke (http://www.arclighting.de) gave an overview about media facades for urban brand communication and addressed questions like: Will the energy consumption of luminous facades go along with the desire to introduce sustainability? To which extent do neighbors accept obtrusive luminous content? Further, what kind of media facades will shape the future of urban branding with luminous tweets?"

"The overview of international projects covers various lighting methods and techniques from lighting designers as ag4, Arup Lighting, blinkenlights, LAb[au], Licht Kunst Licht, Mader Stublic Wiermann, Okayasu Izumi, magic monkey, Onur Sonmez , Qosmo, realities:united, Rogier van der Heide, StandardVision, Uwe Belzner and architecture like Asymptote Architecture, BIG, Frank Gehry, Kohn Pederson Fox, Jean Nouvel, Peter Cook, UN Studio, schneider + schuhmacher, Simone Giostra, WOHA architects1. Artists like Doug Aitken are included in the timeline as well. Brands like Coca- Cola, Nokia, American Eagle, Citroen, Bayer and ERCO or social campaigns for Occupy Wall Street with the Illuminator are presented as case studies."


RELATED
2012 Media Facades Summit
Media Facades: "When Buildings Start to Twitter"
International Urban Screens Association
Designing Urban Media Environments as Cultural Spaces (pdf)
Curating Urban Screens //Approaching the City as Cinema
Media Architecture

Digital Media and Learning Conference, March 1-3, San Francisco - wish I could go!

"The Digital Media and Learning Conference is an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the UC Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine. The conference is meant to be an inclusive, international and annual gathering of scholars and practitioners in the field, focused on fostering interdisciplinary and participatory dialog and linking theory, empirical study, policy, and practice. The third annual conference – DML2012 – is organized around the theme “Beyond Educational Technology: Learning Innovations in a Connected World” and will be held between March 1-3, 2012 in San Francisco, California." -DML2012


Digital Media and Learning Conference Website

Keynote and Plenary Panalists

John Seely Brown will be the opening keynote for the conference.

Building Interfaces for the New Decade: Conference at the Tech Museum, San Jose, California

Here is information about a day-long conference that I'm sure will be well worth attending:

November 15, 2011 (Tuesday)

Building Interfaces for the New Decade Conference

The Tech Museum

San Jose, California

If you can't make it to San Jose, the conference can be attended "virtually".  You can register for the conference via the EventBright website.


Here is the list of speakers and presentations for the conference:


Tamara Schwarz, Senior Manager of Experience Design, Chabot Space & Science Center
"RFID-enabled Interactive Exhibits, or... What's a warehouse inventory management technology doing in an interactive science center?"
Christopher Stapleton, Creative Venture Catalyst, Simiosys
"The Phydgital InterSpace -The Next Generation of Museum User Experience and Workshop: Experiential Makeover for Learning"
Jim Spadaccini, Director, Ideum; Principal Investigator, Open Exhibits
"Open Exhibits - Community Software for Multi-touch and Motion Recognition"
Rick Ernst, Lead Designer, Ogmento
"How to get People off the Couch and Interact with the World with Augmented Reality Games"
Bob Ketner, Curator, The Tech Test Zone
"The Tech Virtual and The Tech Test Zone Open Platforms"
John MacDuffie Woodburn, Co-Developer, Pixel, and Graduate Student, University of the Arts, PA, & Matt Miller, Co-Developer, Pixel
"Pixel - Using Eye Tracking to Engage and Educate Your Audience"
Ross Smith, Ph.D, Deputy Director, Wearable Computer Laboratory, University of South Australia
"Bringing Fingertip Sculpting Techniques to the Digital Artist"

Below is an excerpt from the conference website:
"Join us on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 for a gathering of the most innovative developers of new interactive technologies at The Tech Museum's Test Zone 2011...Connect with entrepreneurs, developers, and researchers working on cutting-edge interfaces such as:
Augmented Reality
Context Aware 
Deformable Surfaces
Eye Tracking
Feedback
Gestural Interfaces
Gigapixel Images
Motion Sensing
Multi-touch
Natural User Interfaces
RFID
Smart Museum Systems
Tablet Computers
Ubiquitous Media 


Find out how museums and other public-space designers can use these technologies to enhance visitor learning and experience. Experience the interactives firsthand at the opening of The Tech Test Zone Gallery, a new gallery dedicated to temporary exhibitions of prototypes from corporate, academic, and nonprofit partners."

RELATED

About the Tech Museum:

"The Tech Museum is a hands-on technology and science museum for people of all ages and backgrounds. The museum-located in the Capital of Silicon Valley -is a non-profit learning resource established to engage people in exploring and experiencing technologies affecting their lives. Through programs such as The Tech Challenge presented by Cisco, our annual team design competition for youth, and internationally renowned programs such as The Tech Awards presented by Applied Materials, Inc., The Tech Museum celebrates the present and encourages the development of innovative ideas for a more promising future." -Tech Museum YouTube Channel

Hack the Future Day at the Tech Museum

Multimedia, Multi-Touch, and Visitor Participation at the Levine Museum of the New South

I had the pleasure of visiting the Levine Museum of the New South with my daughter, a history buff, and my 7 month old grandbaby. It was his first trip to a museum, and he loved it - the pictures, the hands-on exhibits, and of course, the multimedia technology. Future historian?  Museum curator?  Digital archivist?  We'll see...


We had a chance to explore the Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers exhibit and Whirlwind of Growth, updated to take a look at the past decade and how recent events, such as rapid population growth in the region (69% between 1990, the year I moved to Charlotte, and 2010), recession and financial crisis, have impacted the Charlotte region and the Carolinas.


I especially liked the New South TalkBack part of the exhibit. I think the TalkBack feature was originally part of the Changing Places exhibit, a multi-part project that focuses on how people in the Charlotte region deal with the growing cultural diversity and steady stream of newcomers who come from just about everywhere, and how newcomers experience their transition to the area.  The exhibit was unveiled in February of 2009, and due to positive feedback, was extended well past the planned ending date.  The exhibit's impact was extended to the virtual world through  the Changing Places Project website, as well as the museum's YouTube channel. Both are great places to explore. 


I'd like to share a bit more about the Levine Museum of the New South "experience" from content related to the Changing Places: From Black and White to Technicolor® exhibit:


This overview video of the Changing Places exhibit at the Levine Museum provides a good dose of civic pride.  I've lived in the Charlotte area since 1990 and have come to appreciate the rich tapestry that makes up our community, reflected in the short stories (and songs!) shared in the visitors' video clips.



Changing Places "Our History":

(I especially liked the uplifting background music in this video.)


Changing Places: "The Out of Towners" is a mashup of clips created by visitors to the Levine Museum who come from other places in the US and around the globe:



For more videos from Levine Museum visitors, take a look at the Levine Museum's YouTube channel.   The videos are much better than what I took using my cell phone video cam, below:


New South Talkback, Levine Museum of the New South




What I didn't like so much...


Below is a video of a multi-touch picture/info display, part of the exhibit.  I didn't like it very much, as the screen was very cluttered and the content was "jumpy" at the slightest touch. Given my interest in large displays, multi-touch, and gesture interaction, my expectations were pretty high:


REMIX HISTORY
.


Perhaps it is my civic duty to volunteer with a few other multi-touch techies to create a "redo" of this application!  


RELATED
The following links are to some of the organizations/people who work or have worked in partnership with the Levine Museum of the New South:
Darcie Fohrman, Exhibit Developer and Designer, Changing Places
Irene Morris , Graphic Design, Changing Places
Dr. Pamela Grundy, curator, Changing Places
Dr. Tom Hanchett, assistant curator, Changing Places
Sarah Bryan, researcher, Changing Places
New Granada Productions, edited video footage from the Talkback Booth at the Levine Museum, spanning the course of 14 months.
Studio Displays, Inc.  (Changing Places)
Brad Larson Media "Using technology to encourage family learning in museums, zoos, and other public places" (Changing Places)
Community Building Initiative
Emulsion Arts, Film production, Changing Places
Luquire George Andrews, Changing Places (PR, brand strategy, media planning, digital solutions, located in Charlotte, NC)
Nancy Pierce, Photographer, Changing Places
Michael Daul, Kaplan & Associates Cultural Resources, Online Curator, Website Design and Development, Changing Places


Video preview of the new section of the exhibit, including some shots of "Remix History":

The Digging Into Data Challenge and List of Online Data Repositories for Humanities and Social Sciences

I came across the Digging Into Data Challenge website today and thought it might be of interest to IMT readers.  Below is a description of the project, a few related links, and an abbreviated list of links to a wide range of data repositories on the web.  

 ABOUT 

"Welcome to the second round of the Digging into Data Challenge. During the first round, in 2009, nearly 90 international research teams competed in the challenge. Ultimately, eight remarkable projects were awarded grants."

"In 2011, the Digging into Data Challenge has returned for a second round, this time much larger, with sponsorship from eight international research funders, representing Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States."

"What is the "challenge" we speak of?  The idea behind the Digging into Data Challenge is to address how "big data" changes the research landscape for the humanities and social sciences. Now that we have massive databases of materials used by scholars in the humanities and social sciences -- ranging from digitized books, newspapers, and music to transactional data like web searches, sensor data or cell phone records -- what new, computationally-based research methods might we apply? As the world becomes increasingly digital, new techniques will be needed to search, analyze, and understand these everyday materials. Digging into Data challenges the research community to help create the new research infrastructure for 21st century scholarship." 

"Applicants will form international teams from at least two of the participating countries.  Winning teams will receive grants from two or more of the funding agencies and, two years later, will be invited to show off their work at a special conference sponsored by the eight funders."

"Let's get digging."

RELATED
Digging into Data Challenge Second Year Request for Proposals
Press Release    Round Two: Digging Into Data Challenge: Social and computational scientist asked to design methods and tools for analyzing large data sets (National Science Foundation)

Times Higher Education, April 28, 2011, "Research intelligence - Let's dig a little deeper"
The New York Times, November 16, 2010, "Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches"
The Globe and Mail, June 18, 2010, "Supercomputers seek to ‘model humanity’"

Be sure to visit the Digging Into Data Challenge data repository page.  Each repository is annotated in detail and includes links and in some cases, APIs. The page is updated regularly, and at the time of this post, was updated on May 26, 2011. For your convenience, here's the abbreviated version of the Digging Into Data Challenge list of repositories: 

The Archaeology Data Services (ADS)
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/


ARTStor.org
http://www.artstor.org


Biodiversity Heritage Library
http://biodiversitylibrary.org


The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art Canadian Art Database Project
http://ccca.ca


Chronicling America, Library of Congress, National Digital Newspaper Program
http://loc.gov/chroniclingamerica


Data-PASS
http://www.icpsr.umish.edu/DATAPASS/


Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)
http://www.dlese.org


Early Canadiana Online
http://canadiana.ca


English Broadside Ballad Archive
http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu


Great War Primary Documents Archive
http://www.gwpda.org


Harvard Time Series Center (TSC)
http://timemachine.iic.harvard.edu/search/


HathiTrusthttp://www.hathitrust.org


The History Data Service (HDS)
http://hds.essex.ac.uk


Infochimps.org
http://www.infochimps.com/


Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org


Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
http://icpsr.umich.edu


JISC MediaHub
http://jiscmediahub.ac.uk


JSTOR
http://jstor.org

Marriott LibraryUniversity of Utah
http://ww.lib.utah.edu/portal/site/marriottlibrary/

NASA ADS: Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/index.html

National Archives, London
http://nationalarchives.gov.uk

The National Library of Wales
http://www.llgc.org.uk


National Science Digital Library (NSDL)
http://www.nsdl.org

National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
http://www.ntis.gov/

Nebraska Digital Newspaper Project
http://cdrh.unl.edu/nebnewspapers/

New York Public Library
http://NYPL.org

The New York Times Article Search API
http://developer.nytimes.com/


Opening History
http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/history/

PhilPapers (philosophy)
http://philpapers.org

Project MUSE
http://muse.jhu.edu/

PSLC DataShop (Pittsburg Science of Learning Center)
http://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/

Scholarly Database at the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, Indiana University
http://sdb.slis.indiana.edu

ScholarSpace at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa
http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/community-list

Statistical Accounts of Scotland
http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/

University of Florida Digital Library Center
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc

University of North Texas
http://digital.library.unt.edu/browse/?browseby=collection

Just a thought....
I'd be interested in learning if any of the researchers involved in the Digging Into Data Challenge plan to work on an interactive, multidimensional, multimedia timeline to support collaborative data sharing and analysis.  

StoryVisit: Read and enjoy web-based stories while video chatting with your child or grandchild over the miles...

I promised my colleagues at Wolfe School that I'd share something new and cool upon my return from a recent CHI 2011* conference.  

StoryVisit was one of the "take-aways" I brought back.  

StoryVisit is a web-based application developed to promote interaction between grandparents  (or parents) and children who are remotely located.  It is available on-line for free as part of a collaborative project between researchers from the Nokia Research Center, the Sesame Workshop, the University of Arkansas, and the MIT Media Lab

As soon as I saw the StoryVisit demonstration, I knew that the concept had potential to be useful to promote literacy and social communication among students with special needs, such as those who have autism spectrum disorders. (My story of how I tweaked StoryVisit for use with students is located near the end of this post.)

Credit: Nokia Research


One of the good features of the StoryVisit website is that it supports dialogic reading between the adult and child, by providing a Sesame Street character embedded in the story to help guide the process. 


According to Grover J. Whitehurst,  this method can support language development in young children.  In dialogic reading, the adult who reads with a child helps the child take a more active role in the process by following what is known as "PEER":    Prompting the child to talk about the story, evaluating the child's response, expanding the response by rephrasing and elaborating on what the child has said, and repeating the prompt to assess what the child has learned or grasped from the story.  This can include a discussion about the pictures that accompany the story, and questions that guide the child to think about the relationships between the characters, or prompts that help the child make predictions and draw inferences.


To get an understanding of the StoryVisit application, first take a look at how it works with adults and children - below are two related videos and an abstract from the StoryVisit presentation at CHI 2011 and a couple of related videos:







Here is short preview:

Abstract
"StoryVisit allows children and long-distance adults to experience a sense of togetherness by reading children's story books together over a distance. StoryVisit combines video conferencing and connected books: remote grown-up and child readers can see and hear each other, and can also see and control the same e-book. We report on research with 61 families - over 200 users including parents, children and long-distance readers - who used StoryVisit in their homes with a long-distance reader for at least one reading session. In addition, we report qualitative findings regarding nineteen of the families who participated in telephone interviews and four families who were monitored and interviewed by researchers at home. Results show that connected e-book video chat sessions last about five times as long as the typical video chats reported in previous research on families with young children. Moreover, the addition of an animated character increased session lengths by another 50%. StoryVisit usage peaked for families with three year olds, showing that sustained distance interactions with very young children are possible if communication technologies incorporate joint activities that engage children and adults."

-Raffle, H., Revelle, G., Mori, K., Ballagas, R., Buza, K., Horli, H., Kaye, J., Cook, K., Freed, N., Go, J., Spasojevic, M. Hello, is grandma there? let's read! StoryVisit: family video chat and connected e-books CHI '11 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing, ACM New York, NY, USA

Here's how I tweaked Storyvisit to work in a school setting:


On my first morning back at Wolfe, I decided to use StoryVisit with two high school-level students who have autism and cognitive delays.   My goal was to familiarize the students with Storyvisit so they could use it to read stories to younger elementary-level students with autism who are in a self-contained classroom.  I went to the Storyvisit website and registered Wolfe school as the "Wolfe family", using some of the teacher's email addresses as "family members".

During my session with the two young men, I placed them far apart in a large therapy room where my office is located.  Each student used earphones, since I was aware that there might be an audio feedback problem (which will be fixed, according to the Storyvisit folks).  Since the two students were not too far apart, I simply ran back and forth between them to make sure things were going OK and prompt them if needed.

I coached one student to play the role of the reader (grandparent) and the other to play the role of a younger child.  We got this accomplished successfully within our 1/2 hour session, an amazing feat, given the nature of the students' disabilities. They especially liked the video conferencing part, something that they've done at school in the past.  They communicated with each other better through this medium than in person, as the required less prompting.

The two young men were so excited about this process that after they returned to class, they suggested to their teacher that they wanted to practice with the application with their classmates.  They wanted to use Storyvisit to read to the younger students as soon as possible.  

The teacher, without much prior knowledge about the application, was able to set it up quickly.  She used the application during her morning group reading activity, displaying the Storyvisit website on a SMARTBoard.  She was impressed with the "Block Party" story - especially the great recipes included at the end of the story.   

The teacher mentioned that the recipes could be used to create snacks for a "block party" between the two classes after the StoryBook session.  The students could use the recipes to create shopping lists for a community outing to a local supermarket, and then prepared during Activities of Daily Living class (the classroom is equipped with a kitchen.)    

To see how the elementary-level students would respond to the Storyvisit website, I visited the classroom and demonstrated the Block Party book to the students using a SMARTboard. I used "Grandparent" mode, without the webcam, since I was with the students.  As I went through the story, the teacher mentioned that the webcam feature would be ideal for including students who use sign language in Storyvisit activities. (She happens to be the mother of daughters who have hearing impairments.)

RELATED
Try StoryVisit by signing up at Storyvisit.org
NRC (Nokia Research Center) launches Story Visit pilot in association with Sesame Workshop
Intervention: Dialogic Reading (2/8/07), US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (What Works Clearinghouse)
Dialogic Reading Video Series, NCLD Editorial Staff, 11/1/09
Dialogic Reading: An Effective Way to Read to Preschoolers (Grover J. Whitehurst -1992, Reading Rockets Archive)
Hayes Raffle's website
Family Story Play (First version of StoryVisit)
Family Story Play pdf (CHI 2010 presentation)

SOMEWHAT RELATED
Since the Storyvisit activity was so positive with my students, I decided to dig a little deeper.  I use video quite a bit with students with autism spectrum disorders, and work with students to establish joint-attention skills and behaviors.  My hunch is that this is an area that warrants further exploration, especially for children and teens with autism spectrum disorders, their classmates, peers, and families.


The Co-Viewing Connection: "A blog for grown-ups about using media and technology with kids"
The New Coviewing: "Promoting Children's Learning Through Joint Media Engagement"


Interesting:
Game On.... Girls:  Associations Between Co-playing Video Games and Adolescent Behavioral and Family Outcomes (Sarah M. Coyne, Laura M. Padilla-Walker, Laura Stocdale, Randal D. Day, Brigham Young, School of Family Life, in Journal of Adolescent Health, 2/3/11)

Why this is important:
My grandson, "reading" at 6 months old:


My mom and my grandson reading together:



*"The ACM  Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of human-computer interaction. CHI 2011 focuses on leveraging our diversity and connecting people, cultures, technologies, experiences, and ideas."


Cross-posted on the TechPsych blog.

Pervasive Retail Part I: Web UX Meets Retail CX - Screens Large and Small at the Mall, Revisited

If you follow my blog(s), you know that I have a passion for interactive displays in public spaces, and that I enjoy watching how various technologies converge, jump across platforms and devices, inter-operate, and re-purpose over time.  

The best places for watching this unfold, in my opinion, are airports, malls, shopping districts,  and larger "big box" establishments, where the Web meets Digital Out of Home (DOOH), old-fashioned kiosks morph into multi-touch screens and gesture-based windows, and visual merchandising meets technology, digital culture, architecture, and consumer metrics.  At the center of it all is the user/consumer - regular people, moms, dads, kids, teens, the elderly, the disabled, the hurried and the worried. Adding to the complexity is that an increasing number of people who are out-and-about are tethered to various mobile devices.

In scholarly tech circles, the concept of DOOH is known "Pervasive Retail".  The explosion of mobile devices and ubiquitous screens has fueled the fire for research, and is the focus of the current issue of IEEE's Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing.   

Despite the influx of technology, no-one is exactly sure how to do it quite right.  (I have some ideas, which I'll save for a future post.)

If you are interested in learning more about concepts related to "pervasive retail", the Retail Customer Experience website is a treasure trove of information related to DOOH, digital signage, multi-channel retailing, in-store media, kiosks, interactive touch screens and windows, related metrics, and more, with stories about real-life technology implementation.

Mall Video

The following video, taken with my handy HTC Incredible, provides a quick sampling of the screens I encountered during a recent visit to South Park Mall, in Charlotte, N.C.  The last screens in the clip were taken in the Brookstone store, and will be included in another clip that focuses solely on all of the screens that were scattered about the retail space.  

I have a hunch that some of the smaller displays in the Brookstone store were iPads.  iPads and tablets have great potential for use for shelf-level in-store interactive visual merchandising deployments, given the right apps and mounting systems. (See iPads as Cheap Digital Signage, by Tony Hymes of DOOHSocial and the video about Premier's iPad mounts, for more information.)

Much of what you'll see in the following video, taken at the same mall in December of 2009, wasn't around during my most recent trip:

Screens Large and Small at the Mall

Interactive Coke Machine and Kid at the Mall

I was sad to see that the interactive screen on the Coke machine  had been replaced by an ordinary one.  Part of the problem, I think, is that the interactive display was too busy and as a consequence, made the goal getting a quick drink a bit too complicated for the average thirsty customer, as seen in the video below:

Touch Screen Coke Machine at the Mall: 90 seconds to get a coke!

RELATED

Previous Posts:

What is DOOH and Why Should We Care?

Quick Link:  Bill Gerba's Updated Graphic of the Digital Signage Ecosystem

Digital Signage and Digital Out of Home (DOOH), via The Digital Signage Insider, Digital Signage Today, and more

Interactive Visual Merchandising, Interactive Window-Shopping at Nordstrom, Downtown Seattle:  "Writing with Light"

Window Shopping in the Web Outside:  Interactive Window Displays (videos and links)

Close Encounter with "Best Buy On": Example of a multi-channel marketing approach using in-store media and an online magazine 

Video: Gesture Interactive Window Display at Repetto Store in France, by the Marcel Agency
Interractions (ACM) Cover "Proximic Interactions: The New Ubicomp?"; Plus - Close encounters with displays at the airport and JC Penney. (Briefly touches on the topic of accessibility/usability/universal design of displays in public spaces, an area in need of further research.)

The World Is My Web Browser: Interactive Technology in Public Spaces

References and Resources (Partial List)

Fujitsu's Pervasive Retailing (pdf)

Ron Brunt, InTouch with Retailing Whitepaper, 1/15/06

When all the world is a screen

Brian Monahan, IPG Emerging Media Blog, 4/15/11

When all the world is a screen (The video is worth taking the time to watch.)

Narayanswami, C.,  Kruger, A.,  Marmasse, N. Pervasive Retail, IEEE Pervasive Computing

April-June 2011 (Vol. 10, No. 2) pp. 16-18 1536-1268/11/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE 

References from the Pervasive Retail article:

Mobile Retail Blueprint, Nat'l Retail Federation; www.nrf.commodules.php?name=Pages&op=viewlive&sp_id=1268 .

G. Belkin, Pervasive Retail Business Intelligence, Aberdeen Group, Apr. 2010; www.slideshare.net/AxiomConsultingAustralia pervasive-retail-business-intelligence .

R. Wasinger, A. Krüger, and O. Jacobs, "Integrating Intra and Extra Gestures into a Mobile and Multimodal Shopping Assistant,"Proc. 3rd Int'l Conf. Pervasive Computing (Pervasive), Springer, 2005, pp. 297–314.

A. Meschtscherjakov et al., "Enhanced Shopping: A Dynamic Map in a Retail Store," Proc. 10th Int'l Conf. Ubiquitous Computing(UbiComp 08), ACM Press, 2008, pp. 336–339.

C. Stahl and J. Haupert, "Taking Location Modelling to New Levels: A Map Modelling Toolkit for Intelligent Environments," Proc. Int'l Workshop Location- and Context-Awareness (LoCA), LNCS 3987, Springer, 2006, pp. 74–85.

Cross-posted: The World Is My Interactive Interface blog