ideas that have come to pass...
FREE BAR
I've seen two ideas i probably sat on for a few years come to pass recently. What to do about that? Not much? At the time I had the idea, I lacked the resources to really push them out. But then again i suppose i didnt pursue them enough, ahh well, so lets see. First is the happy hour finder. Simple idea, seems fun and could have serious buzz material. First ones to do it and hit my awareness on the web was the "free bar" guys in NYC. This was a web site that would tell you where free drinks were to be had in NYC. Odd to me at first cause I remember paying 3 bucks for a water in NYC last time i was there, still, the idea was simple and it got people to come together online and list out where to go in NYC to get free beer.
UNTHIRSTY
Next up just recently I came across Unthristy.com which is bad name for a website really I think. Here ya got a couple of checkboxes, note the selection by free wifi, thats handy, and of course a google maps api goodness plugin. But to me, it falls short. Its that old thing of connecting a massively boring database of bars with google, so what, a big vast database of uninterestingness. In columbus only one bar fer you, the Hey Hey, which isnt so bad. heh. Ok so what's really missing? Energy to put data in, I dont have the energy to put data in. In fact my app would do the energy part for me and just inform when happy hour near me was occuring. So much of the web is so proactive, come to me damnit I say. The app should inform me when based on my preferences, where, when, and how much of a good time ill have.
mCoupons
Another idea that slipped away that is now coming together online is the mobile coupon. That was hot stuff in my head a few years ago and now its happening.. maybe i should shoot myself in the foot now really. Anyways, mobile coupon services are going through all the various stages of development currently and are now starting to end up on our phones and in our stores. Theres still issues though, like i dunno if people will really use them unless theres real sufficent reasoning to do so. Maybe.. dunno. I think the synergy point will be people, their devices and their
no PVP for a week...
A few bright sides remain. Today is the first day of no masssively addicting gaming week. Thats right no games. However its also the start of immersion into yer creative space week. This week i swap WoW for final cut express, motion, dvd studio, soundtrack, and livetype. I also catch up on some blog creation, podcasting and hopefully some fun crazy art generation. And maybe some good book reading.
daStimulus
Last friday in the heat of vodak pouring at work, Wyatt, Ev, myself and Marty dreamed up yet another application. In about 15 minutes during a wooo thank god its friday happy hour fest at work I drew out the interface and thought out all six applications that would work together to pull off our latest feat..
What is it? It's a stimulus recorder.
So in participatory research you often ask the user to talk about things in a rather interactive way. In our way, we hand users all kinds of different stimulus to get those creative juices flowing.. everything image stickers, to words, to materials they can hold, to smells, to feels, to sounds and so forth. Its pretty interesting stuff really, and it yields alot of data. But its how we record and capture that data that kicks us in the ass at times.
The stimulus recorder is basically another idea based around the tagging of audio as its recorded. Its kind of like a conversation snippet sorter. It'll record audio and chunk it in a database based on time code and what that audio is about, date, time, participant, tint of conversation, stimulus in question and so forth. Its really a pretty damn good idea and its not mind blogging really.
So the project goes like this, yer in the field talking about stuff, and you often have these conversations based around stuff. In the past we've had to number the stuff items and then voice it out while talking so that the transcriptions come back with that audio notification that that particular conversation is about that stuff... for example:
"Tell me more about 43, the lamp shade, why do you like it...??" and then the participant tells you about the lamp shade, in the past you could search the transcription for just lamp shade, but over time we wanted more accuracy in what were talking about so the voicing of numbers became the way.
The problem voicing out numbers of what stimulus yer talking about is that it feels unnatural in a process so well, trying to be very natural.
So then this idea came to pass. We make app that records the audio but also with an operator we observe and just cue in what stimulus people are talking about where in the conversation. Seems really simply doesn't it? Researchers don't know jack about software, they know lots about research though. So this recorder app, listens and its alot like previous apps bob and I have created, it records and with the press of a key remembers based on time what happened where.
So this dynamic data starts to get forming as you go. What I want the software to do at the end is export, or chunk out, the audio bits surrounding what stimulus was talked about and where.
So it'd know when we talked about stimulus 43, and i'd tell it I want 5mins before and after 43 provided another number wasn't also discussed as well. It'd then auto clip the audio, and save bits of data about that audio for the transcribers and my data folks. Like what activity we were in, what the tint of the conversation was (is not, is, or ideal), +/- minutes before and after the tag, and more.
I figure the app to be on a tablet, or lap like device. I want to stay away from laptops a bit cause i want it to be more touch screen interactive kinda thing, less clunky in the field and more flow.
It'd output the audio in chucks and then the transcribers would do their thing and then we'd get txt back into the database and analysis based on all of that but we've already done the chunkin so that job is done, should, it should.. heh make for better analysis. It'd also be good for better image montages, in fact it could record them automaticly for me. Thats a bonus really.
Ok so we have the...
... loader/config app
... recorder (main app)
... exporter
... browser
... analyzer?
... export to XML doohicky
... pathfinder autographer 9000
... superbrain
LOL, thats alot of apps for so little vodak.. hmm. Anyways i think this thing is gonna get a go, and will happen in stages. Thats my job at the moment is to propose the stages and what it may cost to do.
In essence we're talkin about and audio recorder with tagging and data abilities, not that huge of a deal. In fact is really like danotes 3.0 (another app we already have heh.
Ok thats enough of this, need to start a wiki on it or something...