Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, September 2009. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-70). / MobileEssence provides a light-weight, ubiquitous meeting capture tool which affords the user the ability to capture all important information, including recording what was just said, who said it, and what is being said at the moment. Traditional methods and tools for meeting information recording have often focused on the meeting-room as the nexus for useful information exchange. Instead, MobileEssence uses the mobile phone as a ubiquitous interface allowing notes to be captured anytime, anywhere while not requiring the user to change their focus. MobileEssence allows users to only record the important information and annotate this in real-time, instead of only allowing post-processing. We show that MobileEssence produces more effective meetings and post-meeting collaborations: User studies showed that users are not distracted by MobileEssence during meetings when compared to pen and pencil, and that they are better able to recollect events which were discussed during meetings. / by Anthony Morris Johnson. / S.M.