A couple weeks ago, my research into SMS as an interactive medium led me to a friend of a friend who happens to be named Brian House. Brian graciously agreed to talk with me on the phone, and our conversation validated a number of ideas I had about SMS.

Brian’s most well-known project is called Yellow Arrow. Done in 2004, the project involved distributing thousands of yellow arrow stickers, on each of which was printed a unique code. These stickers were sent all over the globe, where user-participants could stick them on surfaces, pointing to things of note. Then, by sending a text message with the arrow’s unique ID, the participant would “register” a “memory” or story about that place or object, such as “this is where we first kissed” or “this is the best chinese food in town.” Subsequent visitors can send in the same text code and will receive back the original story. Yellow Arrow was featured in the recent Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit at MoMA.

The real thing I wanted to talk to Brian about, though, was TXTML, a system he built as part of his Master’s thesis that can be used to create “interactive text-messaging applications.” I’m looking into doing some projects with SMS, and will be evaluating TXTML for whether or not it would be a good tool for what I want to do. In short, it sounds like TXTML is great for creating individual experiences and narratives. Since it’s smarter than typical SMS engines, it can remember each user’s history, and custom-tailor the interaction for each individual. (For example, you text “I am Scott,” and it responds “Hello, Scott, I remember that you like the color blue.”) It may not be suited to mediating the group experiences that I want to design, but I can certainly learn a lot just by working with it.