12 Pixels: Exploring Mobile Creativity.
What is 12Pixels?
Motivation.
Drawing with 12Pixels.
Pixel culture.
Social drawing.
Uses and experiences.
Product.
Publications.
What is 12Pixels?
12Pixels is an innovative interface, mobile phone application, and a mobile phone web service that allows people to draw and share pixel-based imagery using only the regular 12 keys of the mobile phone.
Expensive touch screen or pen based interfaces are not required to express ones creativity. Anyone with a regular mobile phone and internet connection, anywhere from London to Tokyo, Mumbai to Nairobi, can use 12Pixels to create pixel-based drawings and share them with the world.
Motivation.
The motivation behind 12Pixels was to explore the use of a mobile phone as an emerging platform for everyday, spur-of-the-moment creativity. We has chosen drawing as a context for user creative expression and designed a set of interaction techniques to create simple pixel-style drawings using just twelve keys of any standard mobile phone.
Another motivation of 12Pixels was to develop and explore social web services that allow users to share their creations as well as browse, download and re-mix drawings made by other users using only mobile phones. Indeed, today's creative tools can not be complete without providing means for sharing one's creations over the internet and building a community of like-minded creators. This phenomena has been often referred to as "social web" or "participatory culture". was another important motivation behind 12Pixels project.
Drawing with 12Pixels.
The 12Pixels interface is based on the fundamental idea that each of the 12 keys on the conventional mobile phone can be mapped on to one of 12 'pixels' onscreen. The 'pixel' in our interface however, is not a screen pixel but a cell of the drawing area that mirrors the 3 by 4 grid of the keypad, i.e. each cell corresponds to a button on the mobile phone keypad. When the user presses the '7' key on the top of the keypad, the cell in the top-left of the drawing area is triggered on or off.
When the user presses a dedicated key, for example a joystick key, the drawing area shrinks down a level and can be repositioned onscreen with the directional keys. Using the keypad the user can then mark out smaller-sized cells onscreen to create imagery at a finer scale. Currently up to three levels have been implemented. Lines can be also drawn by holding down one of the keypad keys and using joystick to steer it around.
The initial design of the 12Pixels interface allowed for only black and white drawings: the users could change only the shade of pixels by pressing the same key repeatedly. Our motivation was to make the drawing process as simple as possible. However, during extensive evaluation with users, color was indicated as the single most important missing functionality.
To address this issue we added a color menu, which allows users to select a drawing color from a 6-colour palette. After selecting the color, the user could choose shades of drawing color with multiple presses on the keypad keys.
Although the 12Pixles drawing interface is overtly simple, the resulted drawings can be extensive and complex. Below, we provide several examples of drawings created by the end users of 12Pixels application.
Examples of drawings created by 12Pixels users.
Pixel culture.
The design of 12Pixels and its interaction approach is deeply rooted in modern digital culture and was particularly inspired by ASCII and pixel art. With computers integrated into the very fabric of everyday life, ASCII symbol and pixel-based imagery has become a prevalent part of contemporary culture., which can be seen on the streets, in advertising, as well as in work of modern artists and designers such as Delaware, YMCK, Craig Robison and many others.
Social drawing.
An important motivation in 12Pixels development was to encourage users to share their drawings on the communal web site directly from their mobile phones. Indeed, despite popularity of social and user-generated web services on traditional desktop computers, such as YouTube and Flickr, very few such services on mobile phones have emerged. In 12Pixels we created a mobile phone platform that allows people not only creating drawings for their personal use, but also share them with others, as well as download and re-mix other people drawings.
The initial research prototype of 12Pixels featured a limited version of social drawing service. Drawings created with 12Pixels could be uploaded to a communal server from the user mobile phone with appropriate tags. Anyone with the 12Pixels application can then browse drawings online, search them using tag words, download them to their mobile phone, modify and upload them on the web again. Shown below is an example demonstrating the 're-mixing' taking place between 12Pixels users.
A number of additional services and features for social drawings have been implemented when 12Pixels was released as a product.
directly from thier mobie phone.
12Pixels web site.
Uses and experiences.
Developing drawing techniques for mobile phones leads to a range of new creative uses of mobile phones, such as customizing user interface, i.e. creating personal wall papers, using images in address book entries and sending drawings to friends. Integrating 12Pixels with other mobile phone applications would allow for further uses, such as annotating digital photographs taken with a mobile phone camera, creating personalized emoticons, creating characters for mobile games, designing custom icons for location-based services and many others.
The design and development of 12Pixels has been driven by iterative design process and a series of evaluations and user interviews. To understand what everyday mobile phone users would think about the 12Pixels and if they would be able to draw attractive images we conducted a two-month long public experiment where the application was provided to public visiting the Sony ExploraScience center in Tokyo. No incentives were provided, the visitors were simply invited to try out the 12Pixels system.
Our observations suggested that the simplicity of pixel art made it easy for everyone to participate in the creative process, as it did not require extensive skills, training, or reference material. However, this simplicity belies the surprisingly complex pixel artwork that can be created, allowing for a very wide range of personal expression. Indeed, although the drawing interface is very simple and the resolution of images is low, there was almost no repetitions in resulted drawings.
Product.
12Pixels was released at Sony Style website by Sony Marketing Japan as a free web service in March 2009. The initial release was not available in full color but rather as five separate applications: Black, Red, Blue, Green, and Pink. Users could select their favorite color to download and draw images using its five shades. This approach allowed us to 'ease' users into drawing and allowed us to release the full-color version at a later date.
In addition to uploading and sharing images additional services have been implemented to allow using drawings outside of the 12Pixels application.
Firstly, the emoticon service allows users to create specially-sized 'emoji' icons to be included into rich text emails commonly used in Japan. Secondly, the crystal accessories service allows users submit their 12Pixels drawings to Ginza-based jeweler Lights Style to to turn their drawings into fashion accessories such as dog tags, mobile phone stickers, and key holders.
As it often happens with social web applications, 12Pixels is constantly evolving. Additional services and features that emphasize social aspect of drawing with 12Pixels are being added, such as commenting on drawings, ranking and many others.
Publications.
Poupyrev, I., Willis, K. TwelvePixels: Drawing & Creativity on a Mobile Phone. Proceedings of CHI'08. 2008: ACM: pp. 2361-2366 [PDF].
[ see also exhibitions and media for more information. ]
Ivan Poupyrev (c) 1994-2010, updated 06/18/2010
Highlights:
12Pixels project was presented at CHI 2008 conference as part of the Interactivity session, see paper for more information.
12Pixels was exhibited in China at Shanghai International Science & Art Exposition 2008, see exhibition page for more information.
12Pixels was exhibited at AXIS gallery as part of kansei x tsukuba x design show.
Sony Marketing of Japan released 12Pixels for public as a free service in 2009.
New Scientist reported on 12 Pixles project as well as ASCII, DIME and other Japanese magazines and newspapers, see media for more information.