Touch is a research project at the Interaction Design department at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Touch takes a user-centred approach to Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC is a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and real-world objects: bridging the gap between the real and the virtual.
NFC is interesting for us because it enables connections between mobile phones and real-world objects: bridging the gap between the real and the virtual. The project offers the possibility of radically simplifying existing applications and providing a new spectrum of local services through the mobile phone. At AHO we have multiple disciplines, including interaction design, industrial design, urbanism and architecture; a group with significant interest in the areas possibilities of NFC technology.
The Touch project aims to strengthen research and industry in Norway into user-centred applications of emerging NFC technology. It aims to understand the way people will use tangible, digital objects as part of their daily lives, and to discover the information systems underlying those interactions.
Touch is not a pure technology project; NFC platforms and specifications are already well developed and documented. Instead we are taking a user-centred approach, and focusing on the social motivations behind the use of technology. With this process it will hopefully uncover unexpected uses, and significant untapped markets for the technology.
NFC offers the possibility to radically simplify existing applications and providing entirely new services. This has significant potential to drive innovation in areas such as retail, marketing, and public services, and offers strong potential for emergent social and communicative uses.
The project covers three distinct areas
1. Social and communication. This is a promising area for significant, emergent, potentially unexpected uses, particularly in areas of personal information management, location-based services and social networking.
2. Public services. This area looks at the ways that new touch-based interactions could access public data or services in safe, democratic, appropriate and efficient ways.
3. Retail, services and marketing. Exploring changes to the way we interact with retail services, looking at (but not limited to) payment for both products and services, automated check-out, product information, extended services and relationships, recycling, and tracking products through their cradle to cradle life-cycle.
Touch has a number of formal and informal partnerships within industry and academia. Among these partnerships are Telenor, Opera, Sintef, University of Oslo and the Interactive Institute Göteborg.
About
Touch is a research project looking at the intersections between the digital and the physical. Its aim is to explore and develop new uses for RFID, NFC and mobile technology in areas such as retail, public services, social and personal communication.
www.nearfield.org / Touch ProjectA member of the Touch Project has joined us here at TalkNFC.com
Timo Arnall
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