FootLert (Working TItle)

Group Members: Raymon Sutedjo-The, Brian Murphy, Shubham Goel, Kristine Yoshihara

Idea

Digital maps are everywhere. Using layers of digital data, they bring traditional geography to life and help us see, understand and interact with the world in exciting new ways. Maps provide directions, points of interest, and mark business locations among other information. In every case, we interact with these maps on the screen using our fingers and keyboards, but digital maps can be so much more. Properly harnessed, their digital objects can become physical cues to a user in the real-world, moving map interaction from the screen to one's actual surroundings.

We interact with the world through not only our hands, but our feet as well. Our proposal is to outfit shoes with vibrators and motion sensors to allow two-way communication between a digital map and the user. There are many potential uses for such technology, though with varying levels of actual feedback.  We believe the following two approaches are most compelling.

Concept 1: Walking Experience

In this scenario, users use natural gestures similar to what one might do in sand or dirt to mark the world around them.  For example, if a walking path is closed, the user can swipe her foot across the path to draw a digital boundary.  Then if another user is heading that direction or tries to cross the boundary, they can receive feedback that a barrier lies ahead.  Users can share such experiences with each other to help populate a rich map of walking cues that can change as conditions do.  If the path referenced above is re-opened, a user might scratch out the warning by smoothing the ground in an eraser-like way.  This would remove the boundary for future users.  A map can alert the user that a point of interest is fast approaching by providing quick pulses to the foot. If a user wants to ignore the point, he might tap the foot twice to let the map know.

Concept 2: Driving Experience

For drivers of automatic cars, the left foot is frequently left idle while the right foot moves instinctively between the gas and the brake. New digital mapping services like Waze allow users to receive more information about the road and the environment around their car than ever before. The catch, however, is that they still need to use their fingers to interact with such applications while they drive. This concept envisions a relationship between a program like Waze and the left foot device. If a driver sees a police officer on the side of the road, they can gesture with their foot to indicate that to the map. Similarly, if a driver sees an officer is gone from a previously indicated location, they can use an alternative gesture to let the map know to remove the object.  

In this instance, the maps can also help indicate to the driver when important things are happening on the road.  It can buzz the foot if traffic slows ahead, can buzz lightly with increasing velocity as the driver approaches an officer or can indicate on one side of the shoe when an exit or turn (right or left side of the road) is approaching.  One benefit of this approach is that the user's environment will usually be the same - a limited area for the left foot to rest with a similar field size for motion.