Emergent Interaction Systems
As a project in the D-level course Design av Samverkande System (Design of Emergent Interaction Systems) we developed a prototype system for the Swedish music festival Hultsfredsfestivalen. Altough the system was developed for Hultsfredsfestivalen, they were not involved in the project.
An Emergent Interaction System (EIS) is a system which collects data from the participants of the systems, does something with it and feed back the result into the system. The essential thing here is that the feedback loop affects the behaviour of the participants, i.e. some type of behaviour emerge from the feedback.
The project was focused on enhancing the emotional and cognitive experience of the visitors of Hultsfredsfestivalen. The emotional experience could e.g. be enhanced by new ways of interacting with the band on stage and the cognitive load could be reduced by better information systems.
After the initial brainstorming sessions five areas of interest was identified;
- Simulation of the people on the festival
- Database management for storage and communication
- Enhancement of the experience in front of the stage
- A social (mobile) game on the festival area
- An overview of the area with personal guidance
I was involved in the overview of the area. Our part of the project was soon to be called the iFan Monitor, which is an anagram for information.
The iFan Monitor was a stationary kiosk which could be placed in many copies on the area. All visitors have a bracelet with a RFID-tag that was used to identify them as they logged on to the system.
The iFan Monitor had the following features:
- Visualization of the crowd. Every person on the area was represented as a pixel. We also developed a representation of the density of the crowd, which ended up giving a better view of were most people where at the moment (see the screenshot below).
- Location of friends (Friend-o-Finder). When a person logged out of the system, he or she could add a friend by letting them put their hand on a plate.
- Estimation of the probability that you will like the bands playing at the different scenes (Band-o-Meter). The estimation is based on a selection of 10 bands that is made when the user buys the ticket.
- Visualization of the queues to toilets, beer-tents and restaurants.
To read more about the project and the iFan Monitor, visit our project homepage (unfortunately it is only available in Swedish).
The photo is taken by Samuel Bengtson and can also be found on the project homepage along with more screenshots.
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