OMG, the friend-o-phone idea is perfect! It seems to exactly address the problem with current communication technologies—the only way to connect to people you love is to walk through the minefield of distractions.
I believe this is exactly the kind of thing that people underestimate until they try it, because it seems… not too different from the existing solutions… because most of the difference happens at the non-rational level. The trivial inconveniences and the nudges! One click to interact with your friends. No distracting notifications. Even better, make the communication asynchronous, so that even your friends do not distract you. This is perfect.
As I imagine it, this would be configured from your computer or smartphone; I mean things like managing your friends. (Ideally, multiple devices for multiple friend groups—yes, it seems like a waste, but I believe it would work much better to have e.g. 1 device for your family and 1 device for your friends.) To enforce the 1-minute limit, there should probably be some kind of timer, either visual, or e.g. a beep when you have 15 and 5 seconds left.
It is important for the device to be portable, so that you can e.g. take it with you to the kitchen.
The proposed design is elegant, but I wonder whether there should be a place to add photos of the friends.
The application should support remote management, so that you can add your cousin to your grandma’s list of contacts.
Yes! I was wondering how to make the object feel personal and unique. Adding picture is a great idea! You could use a pocket printer like this one to print pictures regularly and update them.
I also agree with having one device per group to keep the affordance clear.
We tried to realize a prototype from a raspberry pi nano with a friend, but it was pretty hard to deal with the audio, only larger device would support it through micro jack plug.
Any idea on how to make an MVP (actually 2!) in a weekend?
Sadly, I have no experience with hardware, so no ideas for the MVP.
I also agree with having one device per group to keep the affordance clear.
After thinking some more about it… I feel ambiguous. Like, groups like “family” and “friends” are best kept on different devices.
But consider the structure of “family”—it is not transitive; the cousins of my cousins are not my cousins. The device would work best if everyone keeps the same definition of the family, but should I ask my cousins to exclude their cousins, just so that I don’t get messages from strangers?
Should I have separate devices for family on my mother’s side, and on my father’s side? I suspect that the answer will be yes… any complication would probably be too complicated for non-tech people. But I don’t feel very sure about that. Multiple devices are also annoying; you have to buy or recharge batteries.
Or maybe (past MVP) the devices should come with two versions? A “non-tech” version, with one device per group. And a “tech” version, with multiple groups per device. Each group has a mute switch—when the group is muted, you won’t even get notification that there is a message in queue.
...anyway, do the one device = one group for MVP, but there may be things to consider later.
OMG, the friend-o-phone idea is perfect! It seems to exactly address the problem with current communication technologies—the only way to connect to people you love is to walk through the minefield of distractions.
I believe this is exactly the kind of thing that people underestimate until they try it, because it seems… not too different from the existing solutions… because most of the difference happens at the non-rational level. The trivial inconveniences and the nudges! One click to interact with your friends. No distracting notifications. Even better, make the communication asynchronous, so that even your friends do not distract you. This is perfect.
As I imagine it, this would be configured from your computer or smartphone; I mean things like managing your friends. (Ideally, multiple devices for multiple friend groups—yes, it seems like a waste, but I believe it would work much better to have e.g. 1 device for your family and 1 device for your friends.) To enforce the 1-minute limit, there should probably be some kind of timer, either visual, or e.g. a beep when you have 15 and 5 seconds left.
It is important for the device to be portable, so that you can e.g. take it with you to the kitchen.
The proposed design is elegant, but I wonder whether there should be a place to add photos of the friends.
The application should support remote management, so that you can add your cousin to your grandma’s list of contacts.
Yes! I was wondering how to make the object feel personal and unique. Adding picture is a great idea! You could use a pocket printer like this one to print pictures regularly and update them.
I also agree with having one device per group to keep the affordance clear.
We tried to realize a prototype from a raspberry pi nano with a friend, but it was pretty hard to deal with the audio, only larger device would support it through micro jack plug. Any idea on how to make an MVP (actually 2!) in a weekend?
Sadly, I have no experience with hardware, so no ideas for the MVP.
After thinking some more about it… I feel ambiguous. Like, groups like “family” and “friends” are best kept on different devices.
But consider the structure of “family”—it is not transitive; the cousins of my cousins are not my cousins. The device would work best if everyone keeps the same definition of the family, but should I ask my cousins to exclude their cousins, just so that I don’t get messages from strangers?
Should I have separate devices for family on my mother’s side, and on my father’s side? I suspect that the answer will be yes… any complication would probably be too complicated for non-tech people. But I don’t feel very sure about that. Multiple devices are also annoying; you have to buy or recharge batteries.
Or maybe (past MVP) the devices should come with two versions? A “non-tech” version, with one device per group. And a “tech” version, with multiple groups per device. Each group has a mute switch—when the group is muted, you won’t even get notification that there is a message in queue.
...anyway, do the one device = one group for MVP, but there may be things to consider later.