Brainstorm
- Asynchronous chat (being able to leave short messages, hear them later)
- Context based video (so put news feed, weather, time, change video conditions on screen)
- voice emotion detector (picks up emotion in voice)
- real-time video chat translation
- audience to speaker engagement feedback
- broadcast messaging to certain group or location
- conversation topic generator for new introductions (suggests based on interests of each person)
- peer to peer location quiz game (send a picture and other person has to guess location)
- match people who have questions with people who have answers (i.e. tourists in a city)
- Optimal conference call scheduling
- Finding the perfect location to make a call (reception, other users, rating locations)
- Leaving anonymous messages tied to location (dropping video messages)
- Sending smells
- Sending tastes, sharing food tastes
- Text to physical mail
- Physical mail to text in your inbox
- Random video chat but location based
- Random conversations based on events you’re both going to
- Using texts to have things physically change in the world
- Or have inanimate objects text you automatically to tell you their state (light: you left me on)
- Email unsubscriber. Detects which promotion emails you never click through on
- Emotion linked to locations
- setting up pick up sports games
- Sharing clothing choices with friends before buying
- Getting anonymous opinion of how outfits/haircuts look
- anonymous feedback from people around you
- Emoticon frequency counter (catches you for saying ‘lol’ ‘haha’ too much)
- Snapchat for food
- Speedtrap warning system
- Gas price logging app
- Beer price logging app
- Instead of warning signs, “warning zones” where if you enter it it texts you something like “Please stay off the grass”
- Smart auto correct (figures out who you’re texting i.e. no swear words to parents)
- Geo caching app that allows for video or voice messages
- Highlighting your messages based on priority
- Visual email, automatically cluster and group emails that are related or from a related group of people and put it on the board
- Undoing texts
- “Nice”-ifying communication boards or comment threads
- Something that tracks your filler words and buzzes you every time you say “um”
- snapchat for dogs
- Speed meeter for people around you
- Where the best clean bathrooms are, auto tell people
Three in-depth ideas
Context based video (so put news feed, weather, time, change video conditions on screen)
Video chat is a common tool for communicating professionally across time zones and distances. In a professional setting, the lack of context that video chat provides can often set unrealistic or incorrect expectations. A context based video chat service would help communicate details about a person’s location that could be helpful in setting expectations for the conversation. For instance: imagine someone is just getting to work in the morning in California and initiates a video chat with someone who is ending their day in Europe. If European worker’s video chat were to have a nighttime backdrop, the California worker would understand not to ask or expect that much more work could be done before the following morning. Or, perhaps a major disaster has just struck California, and the European worker notices this on a news feed next to the video chat screen about local information in the area of his coworker. A context based video chat system would be a useful tool for professionals who work remotely or coordinate with coworkers across timezones. Providing useful information about each person’s setting might help ease some of the common pitfalls of working across distances.
Asynchronous Phone Calling
This concept is to combine the best aspects of texting and phone calling in order to create a medium that leverages the advantages of both. We noticed that many college aged students avoid long phone calls for a variety of reasons and needs that are not addressed: 1) it’s hard to find time in their schedule to make long calls 2) it’s hard to find a private place with consistent reception, and 3) phone calls have become a formal mode of communication for our generation. At the same time, people we interviewed in the last project enjoyed voice calls because it was easier to tell the tone of someone’s voice than texting, and it felt more intimate. This idea would be to create an app that allows you to leave the next message of a phone call and automatically send it to your friend. When your friend picks up the phone, it auto-plays your message and once it’s done it starts recording until they finish leaving their message. Thus, messages can be spaced out but it still retains the immediacy of phone calling. The target users are this generation of college aged students that are in between the texting and phone calling mediums. They could use this tool to hold longer conversations through a series of shorter, asynchronous messages.
Communicating Location-Based Memories through video chat
As you navigate through your day, you experience a variety of situations, sights, and actions that eventually form your memories of a certain location. At the moment, these memories are trapped in an individual's brain and only communicated to friends, family, and strangers through stories after the fact. To improve this form of communication, this idea would allow a user to take a short video of what they are doing at a specific location. This video would be cached for that specific location and only accessible if someone with the app happens to wander over it. When they do, they would get a notification that they can see the videos that were left for that same location. Thus, we would be using digital means to imprint a certain memory on a physical context. The ideal user would anyone who is curious about the history of everyday locations; we found a variety of users like this from college aged students to professors to family members. We would also target users who would like to leave a lasting presence on a place. There’s ample evidence in the real world that there are people that want to do this, from the random guy who scratches “Brian was here” into the wall to people who sign hotel travel books with a short message describing their stay. This idea would democratize this process of leaving a memory of what happened at a location.
Video chat is a common tool for communicating professionally across time zones and distances. In a professional setting, the lack of context that video chat provides can often set unrealistic or incorrect expectations. A context based video chat service would help communicate details about a person’s location that could be helpful in setting expectations for the conversation. For instance: imagine someone is just getting to work in the morning in California and initiates a video chat with someone who is ending their day in Europe. If European worker’s video chat were to have a nighttime backdrop, the California worker would understand not to ask or expect that much more work could be done before the following morning. Or, perhaps a major disaster has just struck California, and the European worker notices this on a news feed next to the video chat screen about local information in the area of his coworker. A context based video chat system would be a useful tool for professionals who work remotely or coordinate with coworkers across timezones. Providing useful information about each person’s setting might help ease some of the common pitfalls of working across distances.
Asynchronous Phone Calling
This concept is to combine the best aspects of texting and phone calling in order to create a medium that leverages the advantages of both. We noticed that many college aged students avoid long phone calls for a variety of reasons and needs that are not addressed: 1) it’s hard to find time in their schedule to make long calls 2) it’s hard to find a private place with consistent reception, and 3) phone calls have become a formal mode of communication for our generation. At the same time, people we interviewed in the last project enjoyed voice calls because it was easier to tell the tone of someone’s voice than texting, and it felt more intimate. This idea would be to create an app that allows you to leave the next message of a phone call and automatically send it to your friend. When your friend picks up the phone, it auto-plays your message and once it’s done it starts recording until they finish leaving their message. Thus, messages can be spaced out but it still retains the immediacy of phone calling. The target users are this generation of college aged students that are in between the texting and phone calling mediums. They could use this tool to hold longer conversations through a series of shorter, asynchronous messages.
Communicating Location-Based Memories through video chat
As you navigate through your day, you experience a variety of situations, sights, and actions that eventually form your memories of a certain location. At the moment, these memories are trapped in an individual's brain and only communicated to friends, family, and strangers through stories after the fact. To improve this form of communication, this idea would allow a user to take a short video of what they are doing at a specific location. This video would be cached for that specific location and only accessible if someone with the app happens to wander over it. When they do, they would get a notification that they can see the videos that were left for that same location. Thus, we would be using digital means to imprint a certain memory on a physical context. The ideal user would anyone who is curious about the history of everyday locations; we found a variety of users like this from college aged students to professors to family members. We would also target users who would like to leave a lasting presence on a place. There’s ample evidence in the real world that there are people that want to do this, from the random guy who scratches “Brian was here” into the wall to people who sign hotel travel books with a short message describing their stay. This idea would democratize this process of leaving a memory of what happened at a location.