2008
Social Shopping and Contextualized Media Exchange
The This or That mobile phone application leverages personal social networks to help shoppers in their decision making.
The MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory partnered with Telefonica to explore how social networks on mobile devices can enable a new type of mediated social shopping experience. The This or That mobile phone application leverages personal social networks to help shoppers in their decision making.
Using This or That, a shopper takes pictures of the items with their mobile device, sends them to their trusted friends, and allows them to vote on the item they prefer. This or That also potentially allows the user to access experts who can support the decision making process, improving the shopping experience. This or That was the result of a workshop and three-month development process during which numerous social shopping ideas were explored. The project was field-tested in Madrid and Barcelona in 2008.