{"id":549501,"date":"2018-11-09T08:45:33","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T16:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-project&p=549501"},"modified":"2021-04-22T08:46:41","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T15:46:41","slug":"thinga-me","status":"publish","type":"msr-project","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/thinga-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinga.Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t\t
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Collecting Things, Not Photos<\/h3>

\"Three<\/p>

Thinga.Me was an app developed for the iPhone and released in a closed beta in the Summer of 2016 through Microsoft Garage (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. Featuring “GrabCut (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>” segmentation technology, developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, the app allowed people to take photos of the important physical items in their lives, quickly cut them out, and arrange them in rich digital collections which they could share with others. Building on years (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>of research (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> in HXD looking at the role of physical artefacts in people’s lives, the app allowed us to explore the difference between digital and physical things, and to see if we could build an experience that allowed people to create a digital facsimile of their items that they could feel proud of and attached to.<\/p>

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Thinga.Me in Use<\/h3>

Over a period of 6 months more than 800 people used Thinga.Me to segment 5,800 items, creating 717 digital collections. Many of these are shown in the images above, which highlight how much the items in these collections feel like real “things”. The biggest focus of this collecting\u00a0activity came from people with “physical collectibles” such as collectible toys, lego, vinyl records, shells and so on. “Physical possessions” formed the next largest block, with collections fulfilling a more utilitarian role, such as atchiving and inventry managements. Next came people who used the app for their “creations”, including kids artwork and homemade crafts.<\/p>

During deployment we were consistently impressed by the dilligence of the app’s user community. As can be seen by the segmentation video shown further down the page, it takes effort to produce high-quality items that are cut out well, but the standard was consistently high throughout the submissions. The largest collection created was of 501 pieces of Meccano – a metal construction toy – featuring everything from individual nuts and bolts, to whole kits and adverts created by the manufacturer. That implies a great deal of time spent cutting out complex items.<\/p>

Similarly, the app’s users were imaginative in their use of Thinga.Me as a tool. While many collections were of “physical collectibles”, we also had a lot of other submissions of note. One person cut out and segmented a banana peel every day at the end of breakfast, as a motivation while dieting. Another took shots of the chainsaw carvings they created and sold online. Flowers and food made up some of the more “temporary” item types, but a collection of Lego vehicles, created without a kit, and named evocatively by a young child, preserved a creative moment in and over time. One person used Thinga.Me as a tool for narratives, telling the story both of their family home, and in another collection of some family silver that had come into their possession.<\/p>

The video below shows the high level “pitch” for the app, and should give a sense of the core features.<\/p>