pictotags link a mobile web app to a materials parking system
A few years ago I presented a new service model for urban public libraries that I called the Library Outpost. The Outpost is a small, storefront library space in a busy retail environment with no local, physical browsing collection. It is a space that assumes an increasing number of library users are happy doing their browsing on the web, and that they can have materials delivered to this convenient location for pickup. You can read about it in detail here.
The Outpost service model still remains unrealized in its purest application. It has been a few years since I first proposed it, and in that time GPS and the mobile web has really taken off. In this post I am sharing my sketch of a greatly abbreviated experience prototype highlighting the ‘parking’ feature of a library app for mobile devices. The ‘parking’ system is a shelving arrangement for materials in a Library Outpost. Its organization is based on user-assigned pictogram tags on both the mobile app and in the signage at the physical location. Currently, the user-assigned pictotags (yep, I just made that word up) don’t describe the materials themselves in any way other than their parking location. In a future version, it would be interesting to get users to assign a more descriptive pictotag that could contribute to item level metadata and power some kind of social element, but for now words remain the best tags. Still, I’m proud of the way these pictotags connect virtual and physical information spaces.
Again, this is a mockup, beta, version 1.0, whatever. I invite your commentary and criticism.
Here are the three most important components of the app, as I see it now:
- Because your mobile is connected to the internet, you can just as easily be linked to an electronic version of the item, be it an e-book, a video, a song, whatever.
- GPS takes advantage of your location at the time of your search, so if you do want a physical copy, you can get the physical copy nearest to you and have it sent to the place nearest to you.
- The parking system creates a visual standard linking library users physical and virtual experience.
Link to a large image of the whole thing here, or just scroll down the rest of this post for screenshots.
Below is an image of the shelving with corresponding pictotags.
There are 7 Comments to "pictotags link a mobile web app to a materials parking system"
This is really great, and I’d love to see you develop the idea further by getting into some of the details. You know, if RFID ever really takes off and our mobiles can interact you could extend this a bit further even.
@Aaron, yes, this is definitely a starting point and there are already more details then I wanted to put in the post… didn’t want to bore people with a blog post as long as Moby Dick itself. When fully mapped, this whole project gets kind of enormous. I’m going ahead with it though, pretending that some developer might come along and want to try to build it…
The RFID point is a good one. I hear you.
One piece that I’m interested in exploring further- the user profile and profile preferences component. I’m reading more and more about this semantic web stuff, and if I understand it right that school of thought suggests that data from social sites like facebook, myspace, goodreads may actually be able to be exported in some kind of standardized format. It would be very interesting to be able to link your library account to all of that.
The other thing that the ‘parking’ piece gets into that I find kind of fun is privacy issues. People treat privacy differently when they are talking about physical objects than they do on the web, where increasingly people are very public with their info. When you connect the virtual and physical via some simple visual standards, you expose those differences.
Facebook offers the best plug ‘n’ play with its FOAF Generator: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2626876931
But there are independent scrapers and generators available from MIT for LinkedIn (http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/LinkedIn_Scraper) and this RDF project for MySpace (http://dbtune.org/myspace/).
Also, most social networks allow individuals to export their contacts and preferences, which they usually can then convert to RDF, FOAF, or vCard (which in turn can be converted to FOAF or RDF).
The data’s out there. It’s just a matter of getting some opt-in and a critical mass, because once a social tool is fun, useful, and populated by enough people that you know or want to know, you’re likely to sign up, too.
Great post Nate, understandable even to the un-technologically savvy- can see how this model even in simple form has potential in any field that wants to connect people with services or products. Seeing a future of more efficient holiday shopping, banking and post-office errands…
Interesting idea! I think geolocation + libraries is going to fuel a lot of innovation in the next 10-15 years. My one concern in the prototype above is having the user select the color and number; it might not be clear to users that all numbers/colors are equal in value (they might think that picking different colors might have a different result). You might want to simply assign a color/number to a user on a rotating basis, then use that screen of the app to direct the user to the right shelf. Just test early and test often– you have more than enough here to get paper prototypes in the hands of some users. Cool stuff!
@michael: thanks! now I just have to find a library that wants to build the app and do the user testing!
i’m with the rotating color/number idea, but i’d really like to find a way (and perhaps this isn’t it) to convince the user to make a conscious decision where their item will be located. i hate the feeling of being controlled by technologies, i’m much happier when i’m telling technologies what i want. i think that control issue is going to become a bigger and bigger deal w/ geolocation and dispersed/distributed/environmental technologies. or at least i hope it will, for everybody’s sake…
[...] to the opportunity to share a presentation of the Library Outpost service model integrated with a user-generated materials shelving system. I’ll be drawing from data and my experiences at Brooklyn Public Library as a case study. [...]