What is my project about ?

Distributed families are very common in today's world. Family members want to keep in touch, but time and technological constraints often make keeping in touch difficult. It is also true that members, especially the younger ones, like to maintain loose tabs with their families. Hence, a device that conveys information about the whereabouts and actions of each member would cater these needs.

Devices like these need to comply with certain specifications that users feel are significant. Weiser mentions that it is important for the device to blend in with the surroundings. It should not require too much attention and the user should be able to get information just by glancing at it. It is also essential that the people do not consider the device as an invasion of privacy.

Microsoft has done extensive research in this area and one of the Socio-Digital Systems it has come up with is the Whereabouts clock. It shows the vague location of a person (eg. school, work, home, out) and when clicked on a person, it would show any extra information the person has chosen to share. Christine Trant from UCD has done a project similar to the Whereabouts Clock. This clock is online, as opposed to Microsoft's tangible clock.

My project is going to be in similar lines. It could be a Whereabouts clock as a desktop item on a computer/mobile phone. This way people do not have to enter a website to access it. It would also be nice to have a tangible clock for the older members who do not use a computer very often, and a soft-clock for the younger members who are mostly on the go, but have access to a computer/mobile phone almost always.

Well, thats what I think my project is about. Lets see how it goes.