Initial search process/journey

In preparation for our Blog-project we used a number of exercises to help us come up with an idea for a customer need. We started off setting up a list divided into the beginning of the journey, the time when you are in your destination and after the trip, writing down everything one does on each part of a holiday or trip. The list included anything from packing and visa preparation, over mapping and finding a suitable restaurant, all the way to unpacking, paying credit cards bills and organising photos.

In another tutorial we got a list of technologies that related to our industry that could help us finding the appropriate base for our consumer need. We got links to Wikipedia, YouTube and other websites to browse on and find out more about technologies like Location based services, augmented reality and radio frequency identification. Also browsing through lists of already existing smart phone applications (Apple and Android) helped coming up with a concept. Both of these previously mentioned exercises helped developing the initial idea for my customer need narrowing it down to photo processing, mainly focussing on situations after a trip or holiday.

During the research process I came up with a number of ideas, but soon found out that most of them already existed and were even comparatively old. I also found it to be harder to improve an already existing idea, rather then coming up with a new idea, but which then turned out to not being as innovative as I thought.

Customer need

Before coming up with a useful customer need, it was important to me that the issue it solves or supports is simple and present in a normal tourists life, rather then focussing on improvement of expensive 5-Star hotels that only a small percentage of people can afford anyway.

So I put myself in the situation of the customer. I thought of the times when I went travelling for my gap year and tried to think of the issues I came across. When I go travelling, no matter if for a weekend, a typical two week holiday or a 12 months gap year, I always take crazy amounts of photos of every, even remotely interesting object or landscape as well as pictures of all the people you meet and spend time with. By the time I get back home I upload all the photos I’ve taken on my laptop realising that I don’t actually remember what or who is actually displayed on half of them. My aim was to come up with an idea that helps in this process and make it as easy as possible. It is an application for smart phone that can recognise the sights, landscapes as well as people captured on my photos.

My Concept and why it is innovative

My product idea is supposed to help the user at the last stage of a trip or holiday; being back home. It is to support the processing and organising of private photos taken on the holiday. Having taken hundreds of pictures on the holiday or trip, probably everyone goes through their photos reminiscing about captured memories and attempting to organise them, you often comes across the situation where, weeks later, you can’t remember who or what the picture was taken of. One keeps asking again “what was that again?” or “what was the name of that church?”. The same questions can be asked about people you have met, fellow travellers, a couple with the same taste or maybe a lovely summer romance. Often you forget to exchange phone numbers, contact details and even names or you lost the paper it was written on, lost the phone the number was saved in. All those things happen on a regular basis and can be simply solved with my concept idea.

The software, in the form of a standard smart phone application that can be downloaded directly on your phone, can be used for two different purposes and involves different kind of technologies. One part of the application is object recognition providing the user with a sort of ‘tag’. When you take your photo, the mobile phone automatically saves the location coordinates and can later tell you again where your picture was taken. The software will then refer to Google maps checking the coordinates for anything remotely interesting within the area of where the pictures have been taken. In many cases Google maps can also provide the user with valid information on the sight, opening times and other tourist information, given Google maps has information saved as this is not a direct part of the software. Similar to object recognition the application uses face recognition software to identify people displayed on the tourists photo. The application analyses the picture taken using face recognition software and after the data is saved, it transfers you with social networks comparing the biometric results of your photo with all different profile picture of people registered in social networks. It is impossible for the software to find the exact same person but narrows down the number to about ten to twenty people, helping to find the person you’re looking for, enabling you to reconnect with those people.

There are already similar applications available or patent registered in both cases. There are for example various applications that deal with object recognition, but only work by pointing your smart phone camera towards the object. If for example you point your phone towards the Eiffel tower, the application will tell you that it is the Eiffel tower, how high it is, admission prices etc (mashable.com). Equivalently many face recognition software’s are used my different applications that can after one manual tag, re-recognise a person. I have used those ideas and technologies to go a bit further and add to them. As mentioned earlier my main focus is on the situations weeks after a trip, so it is necessary for the application to work on photos already taken, also Apple appears to be working on different facial recognition applications (Mac1.no). In the case of the facial recognition it not only helps you identify the person, but goes a step further and combining face recognition soft wares with the current hype of social networks, allowing the user to contact that person via for example Facebook. (unwiredview.com)

Sadly I had to learn after various researches on the web, that technology isn’t quite as advanced as I would like it be, especially on the area of face recognition. The concept would face several issues, including privacy issues, which can be disputed as I personally think, that if someone who wants to remain totally private shouldn’t register on Facebook exposing photos and personal information. I will touch on that matter in the ‘Technologies used’ section further down.

Technologies used

The mobile phone application is going to combine different types of technologies including, face and object recognition soft wares, as well as simple Location based services and social networks. This application will only work on smart phones with internet access and GPS support.

For the Object recognition the technology used, is a location-based service (LBS). LBS is a modern technology combining geographic locations, using GPS in this case, in combination with a provided service. LBS technology enables the user to locate its position via their mobile phone, then passing on the spatial coordinates to a service or system providers, in example a portable car navigation system or simply Google maps. It is a very wide-ranged term that includes a list of services such as weather updates, tourist information and digital mapping. It is used in all sorts of fields including tourism, healthcare or education. The service relevant to my product is GPS, standing for Global Positioning System, and is a “space-based radio navigation system providing reliable positioning, navigation and timing services to civilian users on a continuous worldwide basis-- freely available to all” (gps.gov) is available on all sort of technological gadgets. GPS works in three steps; satellites locate your position

sending the information to control stations, then passing it on to the GPS receivers (gps.gov) who use trilateration, a method using measurements of distance, to find the exact location, in this case where the photo has been taken. In that way Google maps can tell the sight at the located coordinates, given they are saved in their system. Google Maps is a mapping service created by Google providing directions, 3D imagery and important for this application; location information. (Google maps)

For the person recognition, the application would use the much more complex system of a facial recognition software. This software use individual biometric data of the human face. The software measures features in the human face using nodal points (different points in your face). A face recognition soft ware measures for example the distance between the eyes the shape of the cheeks or the distance between nose and mouth. Using this data the soft ware creates a numerical code called a face print (Howstuffworks.com). In order to find the person you are looking for, the software has to connect to various social networks and find a photo of a person with a similar or matching face print narrowing the numbers of possibilities down to a more manageable number, enabling the user to find the person manually. As there are many existing social networks nowadays, the application is designed to only use the networks with the highest numbers of members like for example Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, providing that the user is registered in all of them. The chances of the person you’re looking for being in any of these networks are enormously high, considering the huge numbers of members in any of the above mentioned networks

Unfortunately this idea comes across various technical and ethical issues. The main problem is that face recognition only works accurately with a frontal face image, whereas holiday photos or profile pictures often aren’t full frontals. This Problem could be minimized by using 3D images, giving it more accuracy and also working with darker images; given your mobile phone has 3D software. Still factors like sunglasses, hair falling into the face or poor lighting influence the accuracy of the recognition and make it nearly impossible for the soft ware to work (Howstuffworks.com). There are also a number of ethical and security issues caused in the connection to the social networks, possibly abusing the privacy law (2007, In the face of danger: Facial recognition and the limits of privacy law).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Websites:

http://webtrends.about.com/b/2010/03/15/the-top-10-most-popular-social-networks.htm

http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7060

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=no&u=http://mac1.no/artikkel/9307/apple-kjoper-svensk-fototeknologi&ei=m7LlTOe1J9CHhQeS35XBDA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCEQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DApple%2Bkj%25C3%25B8per%2Bsvensk%2Bfototeknologi%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DQjt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official

http://mashable.com/2009/07/10/iphone-object-recognition/

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gps-phone.htm

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/facial-recognition1.htm

Journals:

(2009) ‘In the face of danger: Facial recognition and the limits of privacy law’, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 120, Issue 7, p1870-1891. EBSCO host/Business Source Complete.