I’ve been ranting about bringing the digital to analog. I really want to pursue a set of projects that provide information through non visual means i.e. through haptic feedback, or sound.. So, a cup that screams when you pour hot coffee in, and shivers when you have ice tea. A work table that shouts out when you bang it too hard. And, I realized that I don’t really care for the non-visual bit of it. What the projects really have in common is that they provide contextually relevant feedback. So it doesn’t matter whether the cup screams or vibrates or turns red. What matters is that it does so when you pour coffee in, and not when say.. you’re rinsing it. It’s about contextual awareness.

Here’s another idea from the same stem.. a contextually aware digital photo frame. The photo frame listens to ambient conversations and changes the photos to become more relevant to the conversation. It can pull photos from facebook as you post them and run a simple search through the tags and comments. If you happen to come across a photo you like, clicking on it takes you to your feed back then, photos of your then active friends pop up. The point is to allow for nostalgia and rediscovery.

It’s all about context.