Prof. Tanda's Guess-a-Ware (2007)

Prof. Tanda is a mixture of a game and survey and is intended to engage players during their daily routines, providing them with amusement and information in return for data about their lifestyle, environmental actions and attitudes. This information is then sifted and fed back to the public by broadcasters and campaign organisations.

Prof. Tanda is played up to twice each day for about ten minutes per session. The game is embodied through a quirky character called Professor Tanda who contacts the player, tries to guess where they are and what they might be doing, asks them questions and even gets them to undertake simple activities and experiments such as measuring the amount of water that they use when taking a shower by leaving the plug in the bath.

A distinctive feature of Professor Tanda is the way in which he tries to guess a player’s current context whenever he contacts them. This draws on the time of day and also on handset location (cell ID). For example, if a player tells the game that they are at home in one session, then the game will associate “home” with the time and logged cell ID of that session and use this information to tailor subsequent sessions.