Phone Grown is an open-source, DIY tutorial that helps families transform an unused smartphone into an ambient information display. It is built on a Google Sheet template, which acts as the database and user interface. With the database 'exposed', families can configure rules and design visual outputs for your phone to respond with any incoming data. Using pen and paper, they can contextualise these visual outputs further to suit your needs.
This tutorial is developed by David Verweij at Newcastle University as part of his PhD research. All details and instructions can be found on https://www.davidverweij.com/phone-grown/.
This project is hosted on GitHub to provide as much transparency as possible about the tutorial and how it works. As such, this repository includes:
- the project information website (using Jekyll), hosted on https://www.davidverweij.com/phone-grown/,
- the mobile webpage, hosted on https://www.davidverweij.com/phone-grown/phone which is used in the tutorial,
- the content of the tutorial in instructable.md, which is also hosted on Instructables.com,
- an explanation of the Google App Script (GAS) that is bound to the Google Sheets template used in the tutorial, as well as the script itself (which is split in a number of files)
- an explanation of how the Google Firestore database is used in this project and its set security rules to ensure privacy.