Mission completed

Time ended up passing much faster than I had expected. On July 31 I finally finished my second Master's thesis about "Globetoddler". Overall, I am really happy with the results. I got the following feedback from a colleague:

Reading your thesis, it reminds me a french poem that I fortunately found traducted in english : http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Mort_des_amants?match=en

Elegant is the science work that remind poetry !

Not bad, huh?!

If you are interested in the project, I recommend you to download the thesis from here [zip/pdf] and/or watch the project video here [Google video].

Thank you!

Buzz Lightyear in space

Image: news.com

Another related project is NASA's collaboration with Disney - "an educational program designed to inspire children's interest in space and celestial discovery".

Daddy doll

Image: daylife.com

My former colleague Elan just sent me a link to this ABC article about the Daddy dolls. Cute!

The traveling parent blog

Image: Armchair Media

I just stumbled upon this blog by Tom Daly who introduces himself in the following way:

I am a business traveling parent of 4. This blog supports some books I wrote to help parents like me who wanted to be able to help their young kids better understand the need for business travel. I currently work for Coca-Cola and in this job, travel pretty frequently.

Turns out, Tom has written a series of (four) books related to the topic: "Sometimes i work in..." (subtitle: "What I do when I am not with you"). Really cute and very interesting. I just order all four of them.

Survey: The business traveling parent

For those of you who travel for business and have at least one child age 3-6.

Click Here to take survey

Sponsor week slides

Supporting Long-Distance Parent-Child Interaction

Image: Svetlana Yarosh

Svetlana Yarosh at Georgia Tech contacted me a couple of days ago:

My name is Lana and I am a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech. I saw your Globetoddler work in this CHIs proceedings (unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to your poster while there) and I think that we may benefit from talking in-depth. I research divorced families, in particular, supporting the interaction between the distributed parent and the child.

Lana has been involved in several projects, all strongly related to Globetoddler. In particular, eMutts (Sensor Toys for Seeding Communication between Parents and Children) has many similar features.

Very inspiring and interesting work.

Together Anywhere, Together Anytime

Tom just sent me a link to this Pan European project: Together Anywhere, Together Anytime. The Interactive Insitute in Sweden is one of 13 different organizations. The website says:

How can technology help to nurture family-to-family relationships? This is the question asked by the collaborative project “Together Anywhere, Together Anytime” (TA2).

For many people, families form the key social unit. Many of our enduring experiences, holidays, celebrations and moments of fun and laughter are framed as family events. This is something that current technology does not address well: modern media and communications serve individuals best, with phones, computers and electronic games devices tending to be individually owned and providing individual experiences.

TA2 seeks to redress this imbalance, by exploring how technology can support group to group communication.

Sounds very interesting and related, doesn't it?

Early screen shot

I haven't written in a while, which actually is sort of a good thing. I have been working hard on my project. The image above is a screen shot from the child's end of Globetoddler. The orange avatar is controlled by the child's physical toy, whereas the green avatar has been added remotely from the parent's cell phone application.

Quilt of Belonging

Image: Quilt of Belonging official website

A while ago Dale Hubert recommended me to take a look at a multi-cultural collective creativity project called Quilt of Belonging:

I thought of you as I listened to a radio interview with Esther Bryan. She's a Canadian artist who created the Quilt of Belonging. Since Canada is such a multi-cultural country with citizens from every country in the world, she created this quilt. It's amazing! It has sections from everywhere in the world. Her website allows visitors to view individual pieces and provides a summary of what materials were used and why the design was chosen, as well as information about that country. And the final result is gorgeous!

You can read more about the project here.

Traveling monkey advertising

Now, this is something. Have a look at one of the latest AT&T Wireless commercial.

My former colleague Rachel's comment on it was:

...it's like Monkey Business meets Globe Toddler!

Or maybe Monkey Business meets Flat Stanley?

Shared custody

Image: My Tamagotchi

I have now come to a point where many of the details in my project have been nailed down. However, one of the most crucial elements is still unsolved, namely, the need for a joint activity that helps the parent and the child connect over a distance, and, ideally, serves as an incentive for the child.

As you probably already know, the basic concept is that the child and the parent use the same system for different reasons, but still feel a (strong) connection. Until recently, I had no idea how to realize the concept. All I knew was that I'll have a cell phone on the parent's end, a stuffed animal on the child's end, and some kind of software that ties those two interfaces together. Nothing really specific.

Then, completely out of the blue, my former colleague Matt sent me an email the other day:

Just read your blog post.

Very similar concepts to my idea (and that's all it it so far) about
long distance pet ownership...

The idea is that two or more people (e.g. parent and kid) take joint
responsibility for looking after a virtual pet. Maybe the pet is
life-sized in the home and also accessible by mobile means. But "joint
responsibility" and mutual awareness is the key - e.g. it needs to be
walked once a day and it doesn't matter who walks it, just as long as the
owners coordinate and make sure it happens.

I love the concept. In fact, the idea is so nice and simple that I can't stop wondering why I never thought of it myself. Single-user virtual "custody" has existed for a while now, for example Tamagotchi, Webkinz, and AdoptMe, but joint virtual custody is new (at least to me). The concept fits really nicely into my project, since it has the potential of serving as a (1) separation preparation activity, (2) engaging discussion topic, (3) learning tool (time, planning, shared responsibility), (4) incentive for continuous use, and (5) fun toy at the same time.

Approved

I received yet another email:

12/27/07

Paulina ~ MASCOM has reviewed your proposal -- congratulations your
proposal is considered approved.

Yey!