Identity Project - Thread of thought thus far

The first project was assigned to us a week ago and its main concept was the design of a networked device that promotes and protects its users identity. Victor and me, formed a team and the main concept of our idea is the Tamagotchi game device. In a discussion on our idea, Mr. Martin, mentioned some ways to link the identity of a person with the Tamagotchi game. For example, the pet's well-being will depend on the level the user communicates with his friends (based on his or her Facebook activity).

Promotion of the identity

Today, we discussed with Mr. Jared and he gave us food for thought talking about the creative identity each (creative) person has. From that, we came up with the idea of a device that will promote our creative identity by showing its user's portfolio. Combining this idea, with the Tamagotchi concept, we got as a result a device in which a creature will "live" and its well-being will depend on the porfolio of the user. The portfolio will also be presented by the device.

Networked solution

According to the project brief, the device should be networked, so we chose that the portfolio of every user will be online in a website specialized for the community of our device's users. Moreover, choosing quality over quantity we introduced voting of every user's artwork, so now the creature's well-being will be based on the votes its master's artworks receive.

Protection of the identity

The identity of a potential user is highly protected, as every new user will create a profile for his or her creature not a personal one. Also, the device along with the creature will have to be registered so the owner of the device alone, will be able to alter the creature's profile.

Tribes

Each creature will also have an area of expertise, so for example an animator, will set his or her creature's occupation as Animator, declaring that his or her portfolio will contain mainly animation artworks. The users will also be able to form groups (tribes). In the community website, the highest ranked tribes, as well as the highest ranked creatures will be shown.

Implementation

Device?

Thinking about the implementation, we firstly thought of a small easy-to-carry device, which connects wirelessly with an iPhone. We chose the iPhone because it would be almost unachievable to create a device, which will be able to connect and co-operate satisfyingly with any cell phone or media player device. The main reason for chosing the iPhone though, is that it has a large screen along with a high quality display and a good processor, able to present any possible artwork which is in digital form.

The device would contain our portfolio and would notify us, lighting a LED, or by vibration, in every update of our creature's status in the community (ex. a new vote for an artwork of the user), or an update about the tribe the creature belongs to.

iPhone application

Working and optimizing the concept of our project, we found out that the device was useless, as an iPhone application alone, could do the job too, even more effectively, offering the user the privilege of not carrying an extra device, apart from his or her iPhone. Thus, the first half of the project is the iPhone application with which each user will be able to:

1. Watch his or her creature status, as well as the status and the activity of the tribe it belongs.
2. Watch and browse the artwork submitted by him or her, in an attractive and elegant User Interface.

The features stated above will be the core of the iPhone application and we are currently working on adding more.

Community website

The second half of the project is the community website in which every user of our software will be able to:

1. Add, remove and modify his or her artworks.
2. Watch his or her creature's status.
3. Create a tribe, or join an existing one by contacting other users.
4. Browse the portfolios of others' and vote for the artworks he or she likes.

More features are to be added in the website too.

We are going to work on the storyboard now and in the process we hope to define in better detail the properties of our project.