Applied dream project
(for Telecom Italia Lab)

Personal Channels
on my own

Elderly people enjoy memories. Memories are more and more collected in digital format through videocameras, mobile phones, and photocameras.
How can we easily deliver to them this kind of new content?

How can we allow them to use this new kind of memories preserving the aspect of an easy tangible interaction with them?

Personal Channel is a service dedicated to elderly people, a new way to collect and enjoy memories.

Through Personal Channel they can watch on their iTV personal content, about their family, using dedicated channels in which they can store and move incoming messages.
Each item (MMS video, photo or text message) has a physical instance that can be used to call quickly the desired content.

Service’s Structure

Broadband Internet connection is becoming a reality in big cities now. Along with that we’ve a dedicated phone line. Personal channel could work through that line collecting incoming MMS content, transcoding it for TV screen (Telecom is developing the transcoder), and store it on a server.
The TV could work as a receiver terminal, where to display and rearrange content.
A member of the family, who is more familiar with these technologies can deal remotely with the disk space, rented on the server of the broadband provider.
The interactions she is going to be able to carry out with that content are done through remote control with and a tangible interface (a set of RfID cards that contain the content she decides to save).

User profile

The user I chose to work for is my grandmother. She is the typical Italian granny, cheerful, still active and curious, especially about her grandchildren’s life. She stays a lot in front of TV, keeping the volume so loud that she barely hears what’s around her. It’s a kind of immersive experience, a sound bubble in which her life takes place when she’s alone at home.
She loves to keep in touch with her family by phone, as we grandchildren are scattered around the world. She normally receives lot of letters from her Canadian relatives and she’s always informed about the last important events {marriages, baptism...}.
Her house is a narrative experience for her visitors, she keeps all the memories about her life around her: old photos, ugly souvenirs, odd gifts from friends and family. Every one them is a starting point for a new story. Apart from those she keeps all our photos, cards, letters in metal boxes she normally open to show to people recent important news about members of her family.