MAS.962

Week 4

03.03.98

The Virtual Society: Identity, Interaction and Interface Design
Graphical conversations I

Design exercise, part I (due Monday March 2):

Design a graphical interface for an online conversation. Some questions to think about are:

• How are the participants represented - name? image? voice? How do they control their representation? Is it static or a source of expression?
• Is the design for a real-time conversation (e.g. chat) or an asynchronous discussion (e.g. newsgroups)?
• What is the means of communication - text? audio? graphics?
• What devices are used for input? For display?
• How long do the discussions persist? Are there ways to see the history?
• How many people can participate?

You may choose to concentrate on one area, e.g designing a way to view the history of a conversation. For this week, you should prepare a preliminary sketch of your design, including text explaining what problems your design addresses and how it solves them.

Please send me the URL of your preliminary design by Monday afternoon (March 2).

Designs-in-progress:

• Adam Holt ... holt@mit.edu
• Karrie Karahalios ... kkarahal@media.mit.edu
• Marina Umaschi Bers ... marinau@media.mit.edu
• Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson ... hannes@media.mit.edu
• Fernanda Viegas ... fviegas@media.mit.edu
• Stefan Marti ... stefanm@media.mit.edu
• Kimiko Ryokai ... kimiko@media.mit.edu
• Ingeborg Endter ... inge@media.mit.edu
• Rick Borovoy ... borovoy@media.mit.edu
• Julia Burch ... jfb@media.mit.edu

Some relevant sites:

• Microsoft's V-Chat (a 3D environment) and Comic Chat (graphical enhancements to regular chat programs).
• The Palace - one of the more popular 3D environments. Numerous sites.
• Papers about Habitat, one of the first graphical social environments
• Starbright World - designed for seriously ill children (Spielbe rg production).
• World Fiction (requires Netscape 3.x)