Research
Okay, so I’m ReeD Martin, a Research Assistant at the MIT Media Lab in the Information Ecology group. I work on lots of interesting stuff, some of which I will share with you now. If you’re interested in any of it, have related or tangential ideas, or just want to talk, drop me a line: reedm / media (dot) mit [dot] edu. As you can tell from how I wrote that, I don’t like spam.
Let’s talk about projects, shall we?
Kairoscope • Social Time
If everyone says time is relative, why is it still so rigidly defined? There have been many attempts to address the issue of coordinating schedules, but each of these attempts runs into an issue of rigidity: in order to negotiate an event, a specific time must be designated in advance. This model is inherently poor at accommodating life’s unpredictability. Kairoscope looks at time from a human perspective: allowing people to coordinate events socially and on the fly, without worrying about precision. This project evaluates the potential implications of a shared, malleable schedule, as well as the data inputs and user interactions necessary to create such a system.
» More at the Kairoscope Project Page
EcoTV • Social Television via Multi-Device Interaction
Functionally, television content delivery has remained largely unchanged since the introduction of television networks. EcoTV explores an experience where the role of the corporate network is replaced by a social network. Channel content is composed of a series of smaller parts, strewn together based on a user’s interests, community, and peers. This project creates an interface to explore television socially, connecting a user with a community through content, with varying levels of interactivity: from passively consuming a series to actively crafting one’s own television and social experience.
» More at the EcoTV Project Page
Window Wallet • Mobile Device as Information Conduit
While computer data can live virtually anywhere, we are still faced with the mundane tasks of document management such as uploading, sharing, and syncing between locations. Window Wallet aims to remove the burden of managing your data across screens, computers, and devices by turning your portable device into a virtual wallet of data and software. This project looks at developing an interface that facilitates this process, acting on your mobile device as a virtual conduit between local data and data in the cloud, allowing you to both access and transfer documents independently of your physical location.
» More at the Window Wallet Project Page
InfoSmell • Smell your data
Much of information visualization is done, as the name would imply, visually. While much research has looked into haptic feedback to help a human “feel” their way through information or interfaces, very little research looks at the ways smell can provide us with information or lead to user actions. InfoSmell looks at ways we can use our sense of smell to notify, indicate, or even persuade users.
Audiograph • Superhero Hearing
We have a limited range of hearing, defined primarily by volume and distance. As one moves further away from a constant sound, it becomes quieter. What if it didn’t have to? Audiograph looks at how positional and orientation information can help us bridge distance barriers for audio, and create seamless audio interactions between individuals, places, and information.
Shake4Action • Gestural Mobile Communication
Coordination of and communication between large numbers of individuals, especially in situations that are prone to change rapidly, requires a common output and a recognizable input. Shake4Action looks at how we can organize large groups by augmenting SMS, email, and phone calls with mobile gestures. This project builds a platform to receive information of varying types (keywords, touch tones, and gestures), and return information that can be re-interpreted on output by each participant.
Micro Freight • Utilizing the latent freight capacity of Paris
Packages move through cities regularly delivering goods into and out of the city, as well as within the city itself. There are a variety of systems in place to handle this load, but virtually all of them are designed uniquely for that task (e.g., a delivery truck). This project evaluates the possibility of using the existing, unused transport capacity of a city (Paris) to deliver packages: the people on public transit and cars with empty seats and trunks. The goal of this project is to reduce the number of vehicles required to make deliveries, decrease gas consumption and carbon footprint, reduce urban road congestion, and help to build connections between individuals and places in the city.