Talking through pictures

Maypole

Yvon Gijsbers
Netherlands Design Institute
esther@design-inst.nl

The Maypole project explores the area of pictorial communication. It develops communicators that support emotional and social interaction in everyday family life — a domain Maypole considers an important area for future innovations in ICT.

The socializing activities between family members that Maypole aims to facilitate vary from pure fun (‘Look, this is daddy with the head of Mr. Bean’) to the need for reassurance (‘Look, our baby is happy at the day-care centre’). Instead of trying to develop one single application that would meet many different requirements, Maypole decided to develop a family of applications, linked together in a local network.

The Maypole team recently built working prototypes of a portable and a web-based pictorial communicator. These are currently being tested by potential users: four boys in Helsinki, a family in Vienna, and student groups that have regular email contact.

By the end of the project, the experience and the user feedback acquired during two years of Maypole will be integrated into a set of recommendations for future design research.

Maypole web site: www.maypole.org

Maypole has developed working prototypes of a portable pictorial communicator which are now being tested by potential users

home + about i3net + services and publications + CI projects + ESE projects
esprit + european commission + IST