Social Networking Apps for Your Car – Finally!
With all the computing power in your car why don’t we treat it as another mobile computing platform? Although this raises potential safety concerns it also creates the possibility of meeting the cognitive needs of drivers in new ways to improve safety, fuel efficiency and the quality of the driving experience.
The Technology Review reports that this idea is about to get some legs. In Creating Apps Just for Cars they describe a new class-based collaboration between Ford and the University of Michigan. The idea is that student teams with conceive, design and prototype mobile apps for use in cars.
[Source: New Course - Cloud Computing in the Commute]
The goal is to avoid simply porting existing mobile apps and to develop ones that uniquely meet the needs of drivers. According to the article:
We’re not interested in apps that could be running on your smart phone and moving it into your car,” says Noble. Instead, the students are developing unique apps, such as a “green mileage” application, or a crowd-sourced app to track road conditions and traffic. “The challenge is to find a killer app and then build it,” Noble says.
I am very interested in hearing about ideas for “killer apps” from readers, especially ones that make use of cognitive design principles.
