Dropbox: drop physical data into your digital world

In this paper, we describe the idea of an associated physical object that is used to control the functionalities of a screen based interface (like a website) metaphorically. The focus of this project was to define meaningful metaphors between interactions with a physical object and online digital services. We took dropbox (www.dropbox.com) as a case example for this project. Dropbox offers cloud storage and file synchronization to its client. The exploration was done by studying the features and usage of the web portal and then associating it with possible interactions with the physical object, which in our experiment was an actual box container. We designed a physical box to store data physically and digitally simultaneously. The box also has provisions to share this data with public or private groups. The project outcome is a functional prototype capable of executing basic functionalities of the web service by providing simple and intuitive interactions with the box.