Enchanted Objects

The next wave of the web

@DavidRose
drose@media.mit.edu

Whats next?
So, Whats Next?
What will be the next wave of the web? Is it really just ithings and
apps (apps on top of apps) Not turtles, but apps all the way down?

Disney

Arthur C. Clarke said Any advanced technology is indistinguishable

from magic
Magic, or enchantment is right metaphor for the future of computing.

How is magic typically expressed in film and books? Its embodied. it's
embodied in Narnia in Lucy's magical healing potion...

<shoes>

...In Dorothys magic teleportation shoes.

Or wonder womans magic lasso (a tool to know the truth)

Ordinary things become augmented things. Given super-powers.
Typically to help the protagonist in a very specific way- to drive the story
forward. And usually they are purpose built...

In middle earth, enchantment is found swords that magically know

about nearby orcs, in invisibility cloaks (protection), food satchels that
never deplete (health), infinitely strong ropes, gazing pools for diving
the future (omniscience).

Enchantment
creates the right
affordances

While rain isn't as critical as Orcs, it's still important to be prepared.

My last company created an umbrella that received wireless signals from
Accuweather to anticipate its need.
Magic is a convenient metaphor for the future of connected things
Ambient
Umbrellaare there. You understand the object...and this
because
the affordances
motivates the incremental function.

So,which objects should we enchant?

but given all the objects that we surround ourselves with. how do we
decide where to start? What should we enchant?

Study the history of the future

Heres that exciting part for you and me: todays enchanters...
We can take a lessons from the history of the future to figure out which
enchanted things will succeed or fail. The ones that satisfy primal wishes
or fantasies will succeed.

These primal wishes are revealed through narratives that we know and
can analyze. It's a psychology problem. Especially for cinderellas
narcissistic step mother.
Im not sure what robots wish for, but I can tell you what human want:

Omniscience

Communication

Protection

Health

Teleportation

Expression

We wish for six things that enchanted objects tend to satisfy:

For Omniscience, for human connection, for protection, Health
(immortality is better), for effortless mobility or teleportation, and for
expression (or creative manifestation). These are the killer apps.

Enchanted Objects

1
Omniscience
Lets look at enchanted objects that reveal a specific fantasy. Ill give a
historical precedent, then a recent invention that vibrates on the same
frequency. First, the wish to know.

Celtic tribes, known to exist

in Britain as early as 2,000
BC, were unified by a
priesthood known as Druids.
Druids are one of the earliest
known peoples to have used
crystals in divination.

A crystal ball were believed to aid clairvoyance.

The desire to know...

in the 1939 film Wizard of Oz the witch uses the same device, a crystal
ball, to dispatch her flying monkeys to the forest to find Dorothy.

A single pixel browser

10 years ago I founded a company, Ambient Devices, to make

enchanted objects. Our fantasy is about speed. The speed of knowing
without thinking.

Orb

Our aim was to respect the most scarce resource available. YOUR
attention. Something that FaceBook and Twitter seem to ignore.

Knowing, without thinking about knowing

Stage 1:

Pre-attentive
Processing

Stage 2:

Late
Processing

Rapid parallel

Slower serial processing

Feature extraction

Emphasis on symbols

Involuntary

Volitional

The big idea was represent data in a way where your mind could attune
at a pre-attentive level, without distracting you from other tasks. So you
could get a sense for...pollen count, activity conditions, and more.

Fishing

The orb is personalized to whatever data-stream matters to you most.

Fishing

Skiing forecast where you ski

Fishing

Windspeed near your boat

Fishing

If the fish are biting

Fishing

If you garden needs water

In NC this public display of realtime customer satisfaction feedback is

visible to all employees and passers-by in the highway. The best
information displays change behavior in positive ways.

Enchanted Objects

2
Communication
A second timeless desire is the wish to connect effortlessly with others

Maxwell Smart anticipated wearable computing before cellphones,

albeit in a mocking way

Bonds Pen
Dick tracys watch

In comic books Dick Tracy had an uber-communicator. Hey thats

FaceTime on a watch!

The most interesting work in communication is not in wearables, but

fixtures. Harry Potter's friend the Weasley's had a FourSquare-like
grandfather clock to track the status of their large family.

Presence objects: LumiTouch (from MIT) communicates via squeeze sensors and light

Human to human communication is one of the most exiting area to

mine for enchanted objects. This enchanted photo frame has squeeze
sensors that allow you to Blow a kiss to a loved one.

These presence objects, Hangsters, invented by some

of my students
Enchanted
Objects at
MIT signals the availability of friends by varying the height of their
avatar on a mobile.

Enchanted Objects

3
Protection
The desire for protection and power drives a lot of enchanted
weaponry...in legends and role playing games. The most spectacular
enchantment insures protection without harm.

post-vietnam there was a particular interest in exploration without

desecration. To boldly go where no man has gone before, without
annihilating the natives. The fantasy then was to set phasers on stun.

This functionality is mirrored in today's taser.

For many super-heros, invisibility insures protection, to lurk in the

shadows and see without being seen.

Today you can enchant a plush bear (with a wireless camera) to achieve
the same creepy wish.

Enchanted Objects

4
Health
Now for health...

Fountain of Youth
The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the
youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Now it's apparently
somewhere in Florida, at least that's what the state's board of tourism
would have you believe.

Now we know that most chronic diseases are preventable with healthy
behavior. But how do we motivate people to do what's in their own best
interest? How we reflect data into everyday objects and rituals to
provide effective motivational feedback loops?

Dramatically improving medication

adherence through smart packaging,
reminders, reports, and rewards.

How is magic typically expressed in film and books? Its embodied. it's
embodied in Narnia in Lucy's magical healing potion...

There are 3.5 billion medication prescriptions made by US doctors

every year. And people obey their doctors orders to take their
medication about 50% of the time!

So I invented a cheap wireless pillcap, and did a deal with AT&T to connect
41
them to the internet via a home health hub, disguised as a nightlight

Every month you and your physician receive a

printed progress report.

and worked with behavioral economists, pharmacists and doctors to

nudge people with reminders, social incentives, auto-refills, and
accountability to care givers.

This is what poor-adherence looks like...

Each row is person, each column is a day. Red indicates a missed dose.

Heres a snapshot of a couple of months of data from a control group

where red means that person missed their dose that day.

This is what adherence looks like with GlowCaps

When we turn the services on, people take their meds over 98% of the
time! This could save the country about $300B in unneeded medical
costs according to the New England Healthcare Institute.

Vitality BlisterPack

To support the rest of the world we have developed blister-packed and

injectable medication solutions.

Vitality Watch

And to create a feedback loop for moderating stress, we are working on

a watch that shows your online calendar, and stress.

Soft Scale

Converts ordinary soft bathmat

into a weight and BMI scale
Fiber-optic LEDs sewn into the
mat display last 2 weeks weight
trends against a goal line
Wireless connection to the web
permits realtime data analysis and
graphing on smart phone.

Data must be sensed through everyday objects and displayed in

incidental, ambient ways.

Vitality Sticker

Adhere to a water bottle, toothbrush, floss, a

musical instrument, cellphone, any object.
Activity is reported in realtime through the hub

Adding this band aid with an accelerometer and wireless chip to

everyday objects allows you to track their use.

Spirometer Kazoo

Makes spirometry fun using sound and

projection
Spirograph projection shows visual
feedback to anticipate an asthma attack
Wireless connection to the web permits
realtime data analysis and graphing on
smart phone.

There is a big design opportunity in connected health to bring

consumer aesthetics to medicalized tools. A kazoo for asthmatics test
lung functionality while projecting a spirograph on the wall.

Pepper projector

Dispenses salt and grinds pepper

360 degree camera uploads images
to offshore nutritionist for realtime
analysis
Mini-projector displays information
adjacent to each item: calories
against a budget, ecological footprint,
transportation modality.
Press the i for more information.

How
is magic typically expressed in film and books? Its embodied. it's
embodied in Narnia in Lucy's magical healing potion...

Enchanted Objects

5
Teleportation
We all want to fly.

effortless mobility has been a fantasy across cultures

Jetson
In the 1950s, Ford Motor Company performed a serious feasibility
study for a flying car product. They concluded that such a product was
technically feasible, economically manufacturable, and had significant
realistic markets.

A Boston startup Terrafugia is pursing the same dream today

For most of us, effortless travel more achievable than flying carpets or
cars. Simply knowing the wait-time for public transportation would
decrease pan and dramatically increase ridership.

Ambient Bus Pole

This bus pole design is essentially a giant fill-bar, viewable from about a
block away. Long viewing distance is critical to let people stop into
nearby stores to take advantage of waiting time.
ambient

Enchanted Objects

6
Expression
Maslow called the top of his hierarchy self actualization, or creative
manifestation

The most common fantasy about robots, is they will take away the jobs
that are dangerous, dirty and drudgery so we have the leisure time
required to create.

The Roomba may aspire to be your sorcerers apprentice, but I still find
myself cleaning up after the kids.

Seymour Papert called LEGOs a type of Brickolage. They allow your to

quickly build what you imagine. I worked on the LEGO Mindstorms
robot which allows you to program behaviors that you imagine.

Mindstorms

Another colleague from MIT is working on enchanted tangible bricks

that you may have seen in another TED talk.

IO Brush
At the Tangible media group at MIT, there are interfaces invented to
make creation easier. This is a modern version of paint-by-number.

Guitar Hero
Enchanted instruments like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, also invented
at MIT, invert the learning curve. You can start performing at nearmastery and work your way up to learning a real guitar. What a
delightful way to enjoy music and learn to play.

Enchanted Objects

Omniscience

Communication

Protection

4
5
6
So, six categories of fantasies and examples of enchanted objects that
Health
Expression
satisfy those
timeless wishes forTeleportation
omniscience, for connection,
for
protection and immortality, for teleportation, and for creative
expression. What does this mean for you, now?

Use Enchanted Objects for:

* UX simplicity
* glanceability
* brand presence
If you designing a software or experience designer, you need to leverage
enchanted objects. For simplicity, for glanceabilty, and for presence in
people's lives.

Objects are avatars for services

If you are an object designer, realize that your objects are just avatars to
a layer of rich services. I recommend this compelling book by my friend
Mike Kuniavsky. It contains many examples of smart things and the
service layers they support.

levels of enchantment

story-ification
Heres your opportunity to level up. Consider a simple scale. You could
enchant it in stages:

gamification

Augmentation: (memory, communication, other services)

Personalization: (re)Configuration, preferences
Socialization: tweet
Game-ification: point system
Story-ification: embedding the object in a larger narrative

socialization

personalization

augmentation

It's beyond bionic. Lighter, cheaper, faster, thinner is good, but

enchantment takes you through a another door.

So,which objects should we enchant?

Whats next? Whats next is when the inanimate becomes animate.

When ordinary things become extraordinary, and satisfy the fantasies
that we all share..that weve always shared.

Enchanted Objects
@DavidRose
drose@media.mit.edu

Thank you!