PhD student Fabian Hemmert asks, “How can we make digital content graspable for us, for humans?”  How do we get from the physical to the digital?  He introduces three conceptual cell phone models (“mobile-shaped phone boxes,” really) that could theoretically help bridge this gap that has yet to be conquered.  The “weight-shifting mobile” uses a iron weight that moves around, giving the user a sense of physical mass.  For example, when you’re exploring your way through a city using Google Maps, the weight can direct you in the right direction as it shifts the center of gravity inside the phone, making you feelwhich way to turn.  Next up is the “shape-changing mobile.”  Say you have a wide collection of eBooks on your device.  If you’re reading a short twenty page story, the device will make itself thin; if you’re reading a lengthy Harry Potter novel, the device will expand, making the experience more realistic, as if you were holding a thick book.  It can also change it’s shape to customize the grasp, have the device lean towards you when in use, etc.  The “living mobile phone” is downright strange: this model has a “breath” and “heartbeat.”  It’s meant to make the device seem organic in your pocket.  In standby mode, the phone “breaths” up and down; when you receive an alert, it’s “heart rate” increases and the up and down motions speed up.  To calm it down?  “Pat it behind the ears.”

Hemmert’s ideas are innovative andinteresting, though I feel the implementation of such technologies will remain far-out research assignments for the forseeable future.  He ends the demonstration with this postulation: “Not humans should get more technical in the future; rather than that, technology a bit more human.”  Intriguing, intellectual, and plain ‘ol creepy if you ask me.

[Via InformationAesthetics; Engadget]