Sam Hill

24th July 2013

The first week of Hello Lamp Post (15-21st July) is complete and we thought it might be interesting to summarise how it went. In the coming weeks we can tunnel a little bit deeper into specific parts of the data (responses to particular objects and questions etc), but seeing as it’s early days right now we’re just going to give a glancing overview of activity.

 

Unique Players

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We had just under 1000 new players take part…

 

Conversations

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Players initiated just shy of 2300 conversations with their objects. This amounted to 5221 player SMS messages sent (with a similar amount sent from the system in return). The modal length of a conversation is actually four messages each way, but in this case a “conversation” is really any discrete exchange between a player and an object and sometimes this can be over in one or two texts.

 

Objects

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445 unique items of street furniture across Bristol were woken up by players, meaning that, on average, each object had about two players converse with it (though this will be skewed somewhat by some more popular/ promoted objects having a larger engagement than their suburban siblings).

In the first week the eponymous lamp posts were the most commonly addressed item of street furniture, followed respectively by post boxes, telegraph poles and parking meters.

 

…so it’s been quite an active week and we’ve been really happy with the spirit in which everyone has entered into the conversations. We’ve seen a steady (bizarrely linear, actually) increase in play, and look forward to seeing how players’ behaviour changes over the coming weeks. We’re hoping to make tweaks and changes based on the way people are choosing to play – whether that means adding new object category types, or ensuring there’s enough depth of questioning for people returning to particular favourite objects. This approach to flexibility is made immeasurably easier by the very fact we’ve got a powerful system in place for providing us with necessary contextual data – for diagnostics, effective analysis and review.

 

Sam Hill

 

Ben Barker

15th July 2013

We’re live! A thoroughly enjoyable 6 months of work culminated yesterday in a high-tea fuelled launch on College Green. The first conversations with Bristol’s street furniture were held in a marquee in front of City Hall.

It was great to see so many faces from the duration of the project again. We had play testers and sponsors, judges Imogen and Clare and even Bristol’s Mayor George Ferguson texting lamp posts. A massive thanks to you all for testing, talking about and guiding the project. Our biggest thanks however, are reserved for Clare and Verity at Watershed. This project’s realisation is as much due to their hard work and enthusiasm as ours and we’re extremely grateful.

Even at less than 24hrs old we’ve had nearly 900 responses, and people all over Bristol are getting involved. We’ve had people sharing historical facts on City Hall, thanking lamp posts for helping with their fear of the dark and reminiscing about their experiences in Bristol. A select few from the last hour are below:

What’s your favourite memory of Bristol?
Watching the old Wills buildings being demolished at 6am many years ago

Have you been waiting here long?
I have not been waiting long for a bus … But it feels like i’ve been waiting all my life to talk to a bus stop.

I was thinking of taking up a hobby – do you have one?
I love to play cricket. I’m not sure bridges can play cricket though!

We also have a beautiful miniature of our eponymous lamp post and 4 of his co-stars in the foyer at Watershed. Come down and have a chat to them and learn more about the project.

Keep an eye on the website for a snapshot of what people are waking up and talking about. As the project evolves we’ll be learning how people use the system and tweaking as we go, the most exciting thing of all is we only have a hunch how people will play. There’s lots of potential for different types experiences, such as branching narratives and objects with specific agendas so keep looking for new things to talk to and visiting old ones. We’re just getting started.

There are more images in this set.