Areas of Interest

Sustainable Urbanism

Designing for sustainability in urban and rural environments, and promoting sustainable communities.

Green Home Alliance The home of the future will be different in both its technological and social roles. Advanced materials and new information technologies will combine with local influences to define new modes of in... learn more	Future Banking The future of banks has been called into question as customers move toward a space where they can access their financial information, conduct transactions, and connect with financial information an... learn more	Manifattura Domani Stra... Manifattura Domani is a publicly financed project creating a “green innovation hub” in an abandoned industrial site in Rovereto, northern Italy. We designed a Communication System for Manifattura D... learn more
Qualitative design rese... The way people organize the space of their house is strongly related to their local culture. In the process of designing a sustainable home not only is fundamental to make architectural choices tow... learn more	Emergence BioEnergy The site chosen was the Rural Development Academy in Bhogra, and it is a feasible reference for a small BSE with housing for 12-16 cows. The bio-digesting plant on site provides enough gas for cook... learn more	Connected Sustainable C... learn more
Connected Home Information and network technologies provide exciting opportunities to re-imagine the concept and function of a home. The MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory and Cisco are partnering to explore the p... learn more	Green Villages In partnership with the Trentino Sviluppo division of the Provincia di Trento, Italy, the MIT Mobile Experience Lab is redesigning the village of Zambana, Italy, as an iconic “eco-village”. Levera... learn more

Sustainable Mobility

Rethinking mobility, transportation, communication, and information networks.

Rethinking Video Commun... This project investigates how video communication can be reimagined to better integrate natural gestures and strategically manipulate content. The first cycle focused on ad hoc exchanges b... learn more	Green Wheel The Green Wheel, developed by the Smart Cites group at the Media Lab, is a self-contained unit that includes an electric motor and battery, along with a generator that can recharge the battery. Wi... learn more	Connected Urban Develop... With a smartphone in every hand, and an information terminal at every bus stop, future city dwellers will be able to collaborate with their cities in exciting ways. Working with Cisco Systems, the... learn more
Personal Travel Assista... Working with Cisco, the MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory envisioned a number of different possibilities for helping people to travel in more efficient and sustainable ways. The Personal Travel Ass... learn more	Sustainable Public Tran... Future sustainable public transportation systems will have to make use of the particular advantages of the cities they serve, from terrain and infrastructure to cultural habits and expectations. T... learn more

h2flow

H2flOw is an opportunity for teenagers to develop an awareness of sustainable water use. Through a combination of web applications, mobile applications, and constructible interfaces, The Water Project envisions a technological ecosystem, a resource for educational discovery. By using interactive media and hands-on learning, the project will be a didactic experience that enables teenagers to actively explore water consumption in their locality. Youths will use the Locast platform to share their findings in real-time and engage the greater community. The project will be implemented at the Science Museum in Trento, Italy with a distributed approach that incorporates schools, homes, and the city of Trento. The Water Project is a collaboration between the MIT Mobile Experience Lab and Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, Italy.

Connective Tissue

Technologies and services to foster location-based connections, social interactions and redefine the user experience.

Locast - Civic Media Locast Civic Media is a mobile & web platform to engage citizenship in the process of collecting, reporting and disseminating news and information related to the urban environment. In particula... learn more	Locast - Travels Locast is an innovative platform for sharing and discovering location-based user-generated videos and production quality multimedia content provided by RAI TV. It consists of a combination of mobil... learn more	Ridelink As electronics become more interwoven into the urban fabric, new opportunities for safety and social sustainability arise. The MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory, in partnership with the Provincia d... learn more
This or That Social networking applications are becoming increasingly popular among people of all ages and social status. The newest generation of mobile devices, with improved hardware and software capabiliti... learn more	Improving The Hospital... Working with selected patients, physicians, and the patients' relatives or close friends, the Mobile Experience Lab identified a roadmap for product and services to improve communication hospitals,... learn more	NFC Applications For Ev... Near-Field Communication (NFC), can allow devices to seamlessly and intuitively communicate with one another, enabling a pleasant and convenient user experience. To explore the potential of this t... learn more
Pitti.Mobi In any gathering of people there is a subtle and complex web of physical interactions that take place. These gestures simultaneously create and maintain a virtual space of connections and relations... learn more	PittiFolio Our first prototype, “PittiFolio,” was a conference badge and kiosk system that supplemented the event guidebook. The badge itself was simple and stylish, consisting of a simple RFID chip encased i... learn more	Electronic Lens The eLens uses mobile information technology to enrich the physical environment. A cell phone's camera can serve as an electronic eye, recognizing visual codes that can serve as physical links to... learn more

Urban Interface

Exploring cutting edge urban interfaces to rethink connections between people, places and information.

Memory Traces

Memory Traces is an interactive collection of stories from the Boston Italian community. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, the Mobile Experience Lab in collaboratio...

learn more

Fiber Cloud

As part of the Redesigning Fashion Trade Shows project with Pitti Uomo, the MIT Mobile Experience Lab created an organic sculptural landmark, the Cloud, to give trade show visitors a new way to exp...

learn more

Interactive Bus Stop

In future scenarios of public transportation, the bus stop can be more than the simple place where passengers and buses connect. With appropriate uses of information technology, the bus stop can s...

learn more

Exhibitions

Design exhibitions and installations.

Green Italy Exhibition

In October of 2008 sustainable design leaders from both Italy and the Northeastern United States convened in Boston to share and discuss the latest in green design concepts. Dignitaries from the E...

learn more

Educational Workshops

Multidisciplinary design and hands-on workshops.

Youth Mapping Youth in underserved communities often live in unmapped areas where little is known about the actual geography of services and interactions that shape their daily lives. The Mobile Experience Lab i... learn more	Locast - H2flOw learn more	Future of Television Ar... In particular, we are interested in understanding the future of media and how people access and elaborate information and content on mobile devices. During the educational workshop, we will explore... learn more
Rethinking The TV Exper... No longer content to lean back and accept television programming as it is presented, the modern viewer expects to be able to interact with what they see on-screen. Ubiquitous mobile devices give v... learn more	Smart Urban Mobility Sy... The MIT Mobile Experience Lab has collaborated with RATP, the French Transportation Authority, since 2005 to study how information and communication technologies affect the public transportation sy... learn more	Rethinking Fashion Trad... The workshop took place in Florence, Italy, and combined the Mobile Experience Lab's pluridisciplinary staff with employees of Pitti, uniquely excluding higher level executives and management so th... learn more
Learning Sustainability With the emergence of pervasive digital media and networked communication, the way today’s youth access information, create and share knowledge is changing dramatically. At the same time, young pe... learn more	Castel Pulci In collaboration with the Province of Florence, the Castel Pulci project sought to bring fashion into the future, make connections between people and entities committed to the advancement of the fi... learn more	Metro 2.0 Wirelessly connected commuters provide new opportunities to rethink how an urban metro system can best function. In the Metro 2.0 workshop, the MIT Mobile Experience Lab re-imagined the Parisian M... learn more
Rethinking Location Bas... In the past five years, a number of location-sensing technologies have made their way into the mobile device market. The most familiar of these is GPS, which now comes standard in every new iPhone... learn more	Smart Mobility Information technology will soon enable ubiquitous access to any information people require, when and where they require it. This mindset and expectation can be extended to the physical world wher... learn more

Areas of Interest

Sustainable Urbanism

Sustainable Mobility

h2flow

Connective Tissue

Urban Interface

Exhibitions

Educational Workshops

research