Basic information
Title: Digital Companion for Localised Interactions
Acronym: DIGI-HI
Company: IN2 Digital Innovations GmbH (website)
Trial/Replicator: Trial
Type: SME
Where: Barcelona
When (time-plan): May to October 2019 (6 months)
Scope / objective(s) of the trial
In our currently hyper-connected society, digital communities are generally spanning several abstract domains and physical boundaries. There are however scenarios in which this is at a disadvantage for the digital community members, because information is more diluted and hard to find while conversations become irrelevant for many of the participants. Context becomes of paramount importance, and physical location has emerged as one of its important dimensionalities. However, current hyper-local services are still nascent and are yet to cater for the complex dynamics of on-the-fly local interactions that users experience. Another problem that needs to be tackled is how digital media that seem so ubiquitous can be used in a way to engage communities or local amenities with the surrounding individuals.
In the experiment we plan to create and validate a proof of concept around social networks that are ephemeral (i.e. created only for a limited time), and local (i.e. participants are only included based on proximity). We will build an app for creating and locally sharing mix-media stories using the FLAME infrastructure. Humans remain at the center of DIGI-HI and their interaction with the technology is serving only as a means of enhancing the actual live experience.
We plan to run experiments on an actual street in Barcelona using the local infrastructure. The main goals of this type of activity is to validate the technical integration and assess from a technical perspective the feasibility of the envisioned application. Furthermore, a limited usability test will be carried out to determine how well this type of FMI application is received by end-users.
Based on the activities of the project and outcomes of the evaluation we plan to assess the experiment and provide FLAME with valuable feedback on possible facility improvements, roadmap and vision for the FMI.
What are you trying to learn? Technically, and regarding experience?
In recent years IN2 has been working closely with event organisers, such as festivals, building with them new solutions for increasing engagement between stakeholders. We thus developed new workflows for content and social media management, providing authoring tools for mixed-media storytelling and publishing. This experiment will enable us to explore and test new opportunities that could be brought to the market in the coming years.
In this experiment we are seeking to understand how: a) users with mobile devices can produce and find personalised hyperlocal media content and b) how the FLAME architecture can facilitate this and c) what new ways of hyperlocal interactions through content it leads to.
Thus, DIGI-HI proposes to test how innovative services of the Future Media Internet can create personalised content experiences that lead to hyperlocal interaction and promote a better quality of life. The aim is to incorporate the experiment results into the next generation of hyperlocal social media services which are fun to use, provide value to all stakeholders, have a high take-up rate and are privacy-aware.
Check the DIGI-HI blog post here.