News of SI

SI student projects displayed at 2008 expoSItion

Overall Competition Winners

• First Place: MuseComp
  MuseComp makes use of mobile devices to help children learn at the Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum. The Musecomp interface (designed for the Nokia N800 mobile tablet device) uses animation rather than text to help children better understand the museum exhibits. It also provides built-in chat and quiz options.
• Second Place: doGooder: Fostering Volunteer Communities to Serve the Homeless
  doGooder is an online tool that connects people with service opportunities while fostering volunteer retention through community encouragement. By increasing volunteer involvement, doGooder enhances the capabilities of organizations that serve the diverse needs of homeless people. This project and the following project are both semifinalists in the Student Design Competition at the CHI 2008 Conference.
• Third Place: Portalis: Using Competitive Online Interactions to Support Aid Initiatives for the Homeless
  Portalis is a competitive online game that improves the flow of expert domain knowledge to case managers working with the homeless. The game also enables contributions from individuals who would otherwise not be able to volunteer because of time constraints.
• Honorable Mention: TalkingPoints
  This is a project to enhance urban walking journeys for those who are visually impaired. Walkers use an RFID-enabled mobile Internet device to access the TalkingPoints database, which contains audio clips related to a variety of city locations and landmarks. TalkingPoints is funded by the grant opportunities [collaborative spaces] (GROCS) program of U-M's Digital Media Commons.

Social Computing Project Competition Winners

• First Place: CourseNav
  Designed for a client at the Ross School of Business, CourseNav is a tool that will help students tailor an academic program to their specific interests and goals. The tool suggests possible course pathways based on combinations of courses taken by students in years past, on student perceptions of their own level of success in the class, and on prerequisite knowledge.
• Second Place: Audience-Aware Displays
  The era of the public display is upon us. In the past year, two public display projects have been deployed inside of SI: Paul Resnick's "Thank you" display and more recently, Josh Palay's MichiPoster. This project demonstrates cool public display applications that play with and explore the audience aware-display design space.