Sol+jour - PDA for war journalist: To design an application and a device for war journalists.

Constraints provided:

•  Screen size of 7cm x8cm
•  No touch screen

Initial Research:

Reporters have problems carrying devices, getting across to their office, sources and peers, sending data directly from the site of events, and many more things to handle. The aim of the project was to device a handheld that could be easy to manipulate and make their jobs more efficient.

War reporting is more aggressive and involves the journalist to travel with soldiers troops to the front and are said to be ‘embedded'. Therefore, all the information collected needs to be sent from the was scene to the news center. Reporters need to coordinate among themselves and also take into account his/her security.

Brainstorming happened on all things required by a journalist while on the move. A questionnaire was devised and interviews were taken of newspaper and TV journalists. Direct access to war reporters did not happen. Secondary information was gathered from domain experts and Internet.

Finally factors that would enhance the act of reporting were found to be

•  Faster access to news
•  Access to more and current information
•  Making contacts
•  Faster delivery of news

Existing technology in the domain was studied which included moblogs, peer to peer journalism, local portals, news readers, RSS, camera phone, satellite phone, Iridium networks.

Analysis:

Found characteristics of his job like event-based, on-the-spot working, making contacts important, contains diary with all information, misses out on personal life, accompanied by a cameraman. The required features were churned out.

Scenarios were built to understand the need of the various features of the application and the handheld device. Use cases were developed for the features.

Prototypes were made for the application and a thermocol model of the device was developed.