Future NFC uses showcased in MIT project
27 October, 2008
category: Contactless, Education, Financial, NFC, Transit
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Mobile Experience Lab, along with Nokia’s NFC Business Development department, have produced a video and white paper featuring some future applications of near field communication around campus. As noted on its Web site, the lab wants to focus “on radically reinventing and creatively designing connections between people, information and physical places using cutting-edge information technology to improve people’s lives…”
The lab researched current NFC initiatives and tried to imagine how to further incorporate NFC within the everyday life of its students. The results are highlighted in this video featuring two fictional MIT students, Sarah and John, as they go through their day one year in the future, when NFC is seamlessly integrated with all aspects of student life.
For example, from the moment John wakes up, he can start his MP3 player with his cell phone, then simply tap his cell phone against a picture of his girlfriend to give her a call.
Other uses include the subway, tapping the phone to pay for a trip, the gym where Sarah’s gym workout can be uploaded to her cell phone, tapping a poster of Boston’s bus system to see when the next bus is due, exchanging information between cell phones, playing a multiplayer game with another NFC-enabled phone by simply tapping the two phones together to initiate the game, and more.
Federico Casalegno is the director of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab and associate director of the MIT Design Laboratory and led the team that produced the various NFC uses featured in the video and white paper.
View the video here or read the PDF file describing the various NFC uses here.
The MIT/Nokia Web site is here.