We are designing and developing next generation personal computing based on a radically new metaphor called “Stories and Venues”. We have adopted a participatory design approach with a highly iterative process that alternates activities dedicated to research and investigation, sedimentation, assessment, refinement and dissemination. The first prototype will be ready in 2010 but we want to build it together with you. So please carry on reading this page, related documentation, and remember to join our community to submit discussions, doubts, comments and critique.
Stories and venues metaphor
Everything users do is in the context of the different stories they live with other people (sometimes, alone). Any of these stories is populated with all the items (objects of different types, people’s addresses, relevant URL’s, exchanged messages) created or imported during their experience and users need to have this information readily available, in the venues within which they are acting or interacting.
Interaction design highlights
A Venue is a digital representation of a place where the user can manage the complexity of her personal information flow and communication patterns. Each venue can contain different objects: contents (messages, documents and media), contacts and resources. |
Management of communication processes as integrated part of the Itsme OS permits the user to associate people to documents and resources, and to track conversations providing a way to further organize and access information. |
Itsme organizes information using spatial metaphor as well as a time based metaphor permitting the user to switch between different visualizations for easy navigation. Different interaction mechanisms can be used to show relations between different visualizations. |
Participatory design
Itsme ‘s development process is continuously evolving and adapting itself to the insights and feedback, gathered from a wide community of contributing users.
“Come design Itsme with us” is a series of seminars, workshops, and community meetings that provide occasions for Itsme team to meet the community to exchange ideas and insights. Itsme community comprises of members active in the areas of Research, Open source software, High-tech industry and the potential users.
Tech development and milestones
Itsme operating system will be based on Linux and provided with a new graphical user interface, implementing the metaphor of stories and venues, exploiting the services of a specifically designed layer organizing information.
The itsme operating system will expand the Linux operating system beyond its current horizons. It will consist of two main parts: a front-end based on the “stories and venues” metaphor and a back-end, situated between a standard Linux operating system and the front-end, delivering the services needed for supporting user interaction.
