Project article
Partners
Steve Benford and team, Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham
Futurelab
Technology
Nokia series 60 mobile phones
Central web server
Database
Web interface
Hitcher technology
Outline
The MobiMissions project is an idea from the University of Nottingham which is being adapted to develop a mobile phone experience for young people aged 16-18. Using the almost ubiquitous
device of the mobile phone, users will be able to interact with one another and their location using the prototype Hitchers application (previously developed by the University of Nottingham), which takes advantage of cell identification technology operating on some of the latest mobile phones. As you move from place to place, your phone connects to different mobile phone masts that control different cells. MobiMissions creates an experience that allows users to interact with their location and with others in that location. The MobiMissions project will explore some of the possibilities opened up by this new technology for interaction with locations and with others, and for learning. The applications and functionality of the technology will be explored and developed with users during the course of the project.
MobiMissions takes advantage of the fact that the majority of young people in this country own mobile phones, and are familiar with using them to communicate using text and voice, share music and pictures and source information. They are powerful tools that allow communication, information sharing and
learning to happen on-the-move, on-location and beyond the boundaries, times and places of formal schooling.
MobiMissions is at an early stage of development, and is currently based around the concept of creating missions, dropping them off into particular locations for other people to find, pick up, and move around. In this game, players can create a mission on their mobile phone and can attach to it
information (perhaps a question, a challenge, or an observation) and content (such as pictures and sound files). When a mission has been created, players can drop it from their phone into the phone cell in which they are currently located, where it will remain until discovered by another player. To
pick up a mission, players use their phone to search the cell they're in, and on seeing the list of missions available, pick up one or more to carry with them on their phone. They can then respond to
the mission, adding to or changing its information or content, until dropping it again at a later time, perhaps in a different cell for another player to pick up. Through this process of picking up,
responding, moving and dropping, missions can move from place to place, evolving as they go, moving between players and cells anywhere that there is cell coverage.
MobiMissions works by using the ability of some new types of mobile phones to identify cell ID. When players create, pick up or drop missions, their current cell ID and any information associated with the mission is recorded in a database on a central server. This information can be represented on a website where players could, for example, check the current location of a mission, display a mission's history, or show a visual representation of missions' movements in a map.
The current technology is simply a base framework that has the potential to support the development of a wide number of games and experiences. For example, future developments could see the University of Nottingham's Hitchers technology being used on a national or international scale, amongst hundreds if
not thousands of players.
Learning research objectives
While future uses of MobiMissions may depend on a large number of users over a wide area, Futurelab will investigate the learning potential of this technology by working with a core group of target users to develop a prototype for trials and explore some initial questions around the use of the technology. Our aims are to:
- Identify multiple possibilities for future use of the technology for learning.
- Explore important factors affecting young people's participation in a mobile phone experience.
- Investigate the kinds of interactions between learners, and between learners and spaces that the
developed experience supports.
- Explore the relationship between the 'on-location' mobile phone experience and the overview of the
experience offered online.
We will seek to investigate the role of several key aspects of the Hitchers technology during the research and development process:
- Location, as missions are dropped off and picked up in particular locations, mapped to phone cells.
- Mobility, as missions are picked up and dropped off in different locations, travelling on users' phones.
- Surprise, as cells vary in size and overlap, with phones flipping between cells several times per minute as signal strength fluctuates.
Research and development process
Hitchers technology could be developed in many different directions to support learning in different ways. In order to develop an experience that will be engaging for young people in our target user group (16-18 year-olds) we will be working with a core group of users to develop and design an experience using this technology. We will also capture and explore alternative models for using this technology as they arise during the process of development.
Through a number of workshops, users will develop their own ideas for creating an experience, identifying key elements for inclusion in a final prototype. Users will work alongside designers,
researchers and programmers to inform aims, purpose and outcomes of the research, focusing on creating an engaging experience that exploits the location-based and mobile features of the technology.
Users will also be involved in researching and exploring the experience that is developed, collecting
evidence from their peers and working with the researcher to explore and understand key issues and learning processes emerging from participating in the MobiMissions experience.
This idea was submitted to Futurelab's Call for Ideas programme by Steve Benford, University of Nottingham.
Contacts
Futurelab: Lyndsay Grant
Mixed Reality Lab: Steve Benford
October 2006
