Halfway Through / by Vitorio Benedetti

 This last week we had the Mid Presentations to show the developments done so far. Usually this stage marks the end
of the general research phase and a conceptual direction is chosen to be developed in the second half of the project.

With this urge to present and explain 9 weeks of research, I was obliged to narrow the project down both conceptually
and how it is presented. Finally after inputs from many of my classmates I was able to summarize the project in one
sentence: The project aims at creating a system to help citizend start of maintain a romantic relationship with the city
they live in. Take a look at the presentation.



From this point I decided to take a direction where the map is the territory, the representation is not the most important
aspect. The localization and revelation of experiences that match individual profiles and interests are the core of the
concept. So I am now sketching and taking inspiration in this direction, of a system that reveals the localization of these
experiences in the urban space, not on the screen space.

Here's what I have so far: I've collected some inspiration from directional devices and been prototyped an idea based
on a compass, where the users can turn some dials that set the preferences for the desired experiences and the
application will then reveal them as the user strolls the space. Both the input and the profile definitions can be captured
from the cloud of information already uploaded in the several channels available [flickr, twitter, facebook, last.fm,
my space etc.]

The challenge now is to create an interesting and engaging experience in using the application and also after finding the
experiences, creating a complete service.