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Concept: Small and medium nomad workers groups rely on communication and group awarness in order to survive and improve their performances. This is also true with volunteers team which constantly need to renovate and strengthen their motivations. MASH has been developed for the Red Cross volunteer with this principle in mind, with the goals to become the container of the memories of a group.

What is it: MASH is a system that merges togheter the handwritten messages placed on a physical board with mobile phones and personal computers. MASH is half way between a complex group’s chat, a blog and a huge group’s archive.

board

The board: The physical board is located in the main office of the volunteers group and is composed by a LCD or plasma display with a built-in camera that records the presence of a new message and its position. When you are in the office you wear an rfid pin that tells the system - and the other users - that you are currently in the main office. You can write a new message on a special post-it like paper with a digital pen. Once you put your message on the board and thanks to the e-ink technology your message will be translated to all the digital devices connected to MASH system. The digital answers sent from other users will appear on the board near to your original message.

mash_mobile

The mobile application: as a group member you can have MASH on your mobile. With this application you can discover who is in the office right now and read the latest messages and of course reply them. MASH works in strict relation with your mobile OS so you can have the ‘mash it’ on the contextual menu of your mobile OS in order to directly share whatever you have on your mobile with the MASH network. The mobile application is designed to be easy an fast. You won’t spend half an hour with the mobile phone in your hands because for more complex purpose there is the desktop application.

The desktop application: With MASH on your computer you have full access to MASH features. The application is built upon the digital representation of the physical board but has something more because it does not only show you the current messages but also lets you navigate backward through time and explore all the previous messages which are the history and the memories of the group. The messages are shown on a white 3D space where the older ones are more transparent and blurrier. You use the timeline on the bottom of the screen to navigate them.

desktop

Potential: Red Cross volunteers are from 18 to over 60 y.o with different cultural backgrounds and tecnological skills but with the same motivation toward their work. MASH can be used at different level. You may not know how to turn on a computer or a mobile but still can write and read messages on the physical board and be integrated in the system. As suggested by the name - for those who did not guess by now the name is a dedication to Robert Altman’s brilliant movie M.A.S.H. - the system reveals its stonger power when used to share and save all the funny, trivial and human aspects of being a member of a group.

Credits: I developed MASH by myself at IUAV University in Venice with Professors Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor in collaboration with Vinay Venkatraman. I used Pocessing to develop the first prototypes for the application interface but now I’m currently working to build a fully working prototype of the system.