Location Based Services (LBS), which use an individual’s location to augment or support the service provided, have the opportunity to reduce these drawbacks caused by mobile phones. LBS help users find new ways to make location matter in a world increasingly mediated by technology, quickly schedule in-person social meetings, or optimize the time spent engaged with the mobile phone instead of their environment. They can’t address every negative effect of mobile phones, like the deadly inattentiveness caused by texting and driving. However, they can confront the wedge mobile phones have driven between where users are and what they are paying attention to. Though the population of users is still quite small, LBS have the potential to supplement our interactions with our environment and the people around us, providing unique benefits that could balance the drawbacks of mobile phones.
There are many types of Location Based Services, but I have established three categories of services that may be able to mend the social and psychological tears that mobile phones have rent. There are games that help users find new ways to interact with their environment, services that track their friends’ locations to facilitate quick meet ups, and resources that automatically filter search results by location. In this paper I will define and develop the three categories of Location Based Services that reengage users: the Location Game, the Social Network, and the Information Provider, and explore how each category re-inspires users to participate with their environment and the people in it.
The Location Game category includes services that are designed with incremental accomplishments and rewards as a method of getting users engaged with the service. This category focuses specifically on environment, encouraging users to explore new areas and appreciate their surroundings in deeper ways. “Check-ins” at various businesses or landmarks motivate users to investigate areas they might have overlooked, while the accomplishment of becoming “mayor” (when you are the most frequent person to check-in at a location recently) can give users a valuable sense of ownership and pride not normally associated with a coffee shop or bus station. Location matters again with this service, it is something to be valued and attended to, instead of overlooked in the technology-induced commotion.
Not only does this category of LBS make location significant, it also wants to use location to engage users with their community. One current proposal for Foursquare, the most popular location game with over 4 million users worldwide as of October 2010 , is to reward communally beneficial behaviors like civic engagement with badges and prizes. The idea is to have users check-in at a food kitchen or voting booth and earn “a citizen badge,” effectively rewarding them for being involved with their community. Engaging with location, exploring new areas and activities, these are the goals that the Location Game tries to meet using check-ins and badges. And for those who subscribe to the “game,” a badge or mayor position can be a very influential reason to visit a location or engage in an activity. However, not everyone subscribes to the gaming model. As much as competitive game play can cultivate user connection with both their environment and their community, even Yan-David Erlich, founder and CEO of location-based photography app Mopho, agrees that “checking-in isn’t compelling to most people.” While gaming is a good start to get users engaged, designers may need to find other motivations, like money, to entice widespread user participation.
Applications like ShopKick and CheckPoints, instead of focusing on game play or virtual rewards, focus on what consumers think they really want: “kickbacks, discounts, and real-world incentives." According to Richard McManus, founder and editor in chief of ReadWriteWeb, it is the “real time contextual offers, deals, and advertisements” that motivate ShopKick users, something much more mainstream than fighting to be “mayor” of your local coffee shop. These services provide users with personally tailored information based on their purchase history and current location, benefiting their shopping experience through discounts as well as bringing the stores more revenue through more effective advertisement. However, some users might prefer not to make their shopping history available to advertisers, instead focusing on the social applications of LBS intended to decrease the isolating distraction caused by mobile phones.
Location Based Services, in their short life span, have already shown vast potential to make the interaction with mobile phones more efficient. Instead of forcing users to engage in extended, mediated conversations through text messaging, or page through lengthy search results on their phone, LBS foster chance encounters with friends and acquaintances and display quick, relevant, useful information. Their goal is to support, rather than undermine, the individual’s connection with the people around them, especially people with whom they have a relationship. Instead of holding an immersive conversation with their mobile device to connect with a friend or answer a question, users consume the service briefly and exit better informed. Society is increasingly preoccupied with “staying connected,” and sharing location data through Twitter or FacebookPlaces is another way users are linking into the Social Network. Be it finding friends in a new place or following the paths of people who came before, services in the Social Network category help users hook into the social graph more quickly and in new ways.
One of the major aims of the Social Network is to physically connect users with their friends and acquaintances. On a college campus, finding nearby friends for lunch or study sessions is a major attraction of context-aware applications. While one option is to mass-text a friend group, interrupting numerous classes with negligible gain, another is a quick glance at a Social Networking application to narrow the search down to friends in the area who are free for lunch. Applications like Geomium, Loopt, and Google Latitude gather data about nearby friends, places, and events, in order to present it in a rapidly consumable way. Not only do they help users find friends close to their current location, but they also provide options for interesting places to go or things to do. Far from distracting users from their surroundings, the interaction’s goal is to support genuine interactions with the surrounding people and environment.
As Cornell researcher Geri Gay observes, “in the physical world, people constantly observe the behavior of others to determine where to go or what to do,” and now users are able to observe that behavior virtually as well as physically, and in turn participate in that social dynamic. The users findings can inform their own actions, from assessing traffic levels on various highways through Google Maps Navigation to following others’ paths in a museum. Geri Gay’s research team on Context Aware Mobile Computing at Cornell University is applying these concepts to museum walk-throughs, creating visualizations of the paths, moods, and comments of previous visitors. The goal: to encourage user interaction with both individual artifacts and the exhibit as a whole, and offer users a way to give back to the collective experience. LBS in the Social Network Category allow reflection not only on personal movements, but also on the direction, thoughts, and actions of those who came before.
The ability to learn from the mistakes and experiences of previous visitors to a location is an often-undervalued benefit. Gay explains that “a system that includes social maps and annotation of space with notes allows users to leave traces in a physical space that would otherwise have no record of who was present and what went on before.” Users of socially oriented Location Based Services can leverage the experiences and discoveries of those who came before them, from where on a hike to get the perfect view, to a shortcut to class, to a really great coffee shop hidden around the corner. These interactions reaffirm the importance of community in daily life, along with simply improving the experience of our environment.
The benefits of the Social Network category are hard to refute, but there could be concerns about segmenting the population into cliques of “friends” that only interact within their close sphere. If an application surrounds users with contacts in every location, when are they ever going to make new acquaintances? If FacebookPlaces or Google Latitude can supply users with people they already know in every situation, why would they venture outside their comfort zone? Some applications like Geomium claim to “emphasize meeting new people,” yet the “how” of that claim is strangely missing. If these services help users become more social, but in an exclusive, discriminating manner, then they have solved one problem just to cause another that might be even harder to fix.
Luckily, these concerns could be combated by motivating people to engage in interesting activities, which would encourage them to socialize with the other people around them, leading to new friends and contacts. Choosing to eat lunch with a friend could help extend one’s social network to that person’s friends, and so on. Being aware of where our friends are doesn’t rob us of the chance to meet new people; it simply provides the opportunity to socialize with both groups. This use of LBS to help people socialize directly instead of through a device connects to the next category, which helps users spend less time engaged with their phones.
The third category of context-aware applications, Information Providers, is focused on helping users interpret the world around them and consume relevant information quickly given their location. Connecting the information in the mobile phone to location increases the “serendipitous finds of pertinent information,” along with the speed of those discoveries. The applications in this category have a number of possible benefits, from engaging citizens with their community by informing users of local events, to supporting the economy by displaying information about local businesses, but most importantly it decreases the time involved in finding this information so users can get back to the people or place they are with.
Like Geomium, Aloqa also provides location-based information about popular events, sales, and interesting places for the user to visit, but in a more informational capacity. Instead of having to formulate search queries and page through the results to find relevant information, search results are filtered based on the user’s location, allowing consumers to spontaneously discover and attend local events, answer location-specific questions, or find personalized directions to a location.
For example, universities, most notably Harvard, are also taking advantage of the opportunity to use Location Based Services to provide pertinent information. Their goals? To engage prospective freshman, current students, and returning alumni. By tying traditions and interesting facts to location, walking tours of the campus can become more interesting, and alumni can be informed of changes to the campus since their time as students. The University of Oregon uses Information Provider LBS to foster school spirit in their welcome week, while other schools, including Stanford, use them to track and display campus events according to location.
Despite these positive uses, Information Provider services might be criticized for changing the form of serendipity. Instead of stumbling upon a cool event or asking someone in the vicinity for the nearest coffee shop, mobile phones now have access to that information. Does it make life predictable, even boring, if this opportunity to have chance encounters is removed? Is there really a significant difference between having a nearby event pointed out by a piece of technology instead of one’s senses? According to Liz Danzico in her article The Design of Serendipity Is Not by Chance, “no product or service can be entirely serendipitous. Because we choose to use a product or service in the first place, we have made a choice, thus eliminating some part of the serendipitous equation.”
Although some, like Danzico, might argue that some ineffable quality of spontaneity is lost in the use of context-aware devices, to others reengaging with their environment might be more important. The knowledge of the event and the choice of whether to attend can still be spontaneous; the medium of information is all that changes. The experiences of noticing a crowd versus getting a contextual notification about a concert in the nearby park still have similar amounts of serendipity, however the latter decreases the chance of losing another opportunity to engage. Consider all the times that users miss out on the chance to experience something special on-the-fly because they simply aren’t aware of its existence. If these applications can inform them of the event, the decision to attend remains spontaneous, and the benefits are just as real.
Another use of Information Provider applications is to provide quicker answers to questions that users have about their location. For example, Yelp answers the question of “what good restaurants are near me?” while GoogleGoggles uses “your phone’s location to give you more relevant search results.” The Official Google Mobile Blog explains how a user can take a picture of some unknown object, and GoogleGoggles will use the user’s image and location to look up additional information on the object. For example, a tourist could snap a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on their Android and GoogleGoggles would identify the landmark using GPS and image recognition to provide the user with relevant information to enhance their visiting experience. Already, Google searches return “local place results based on your IP address.” The information available online can be daunting, but these services filter it to the most relevant topics, which can be consumed much more quickly.
It is hard to imagine a downside to enabling users to educate themselves about their environment, but one possible critique is that this example of a Location Based Service really does distract the user from whatever landmark they are near, instead encouraging them to engage with technology to answer their questions. A user sees the bridge, snaps a picture, and is immediately re-immersed with their technology. How is this solving the intrusion of mobile phones? The answer: by making the information returned pertinent. On an average smart phone, a Google search for “bridge” brings up 181,000,000 results. Filtering this wealth of information down to the most applicable information saves time paging through results, which can then be spent reengaging with the landmark and fellow tourists.
Despite the benefits of these three categories of Location Based Service, adoption is still limited to 4% of online adults users. However, Gartner Research, a global technology research and advisory company, predicts that 40-50% of North American and Western European users will adopt LBS in the next 4 years. This leaves us in an ideal place to ask questions about what changes LBS integration will cause. Will the Location Game actually encourage exploration or simply serve as a moneymaking tool for advertisers and businesses? As more and more of our social interactions become virtual – Facebook, texting, Skype – how will adding another service to this list, even one that is intended to bring people together physically, fit in? How will Location Based Social Networks change our relationships? And what happens when the service fails and provides faulty information? Will it be a petty annoyance like text message autocorrect, or a more serious situation regarding privacy settings and damaged friendships? Finally, will we be overwhelmed by the tags, notes, recommendations and bits of information that are scattered across the virtual overlay of our environment? Will it all become too much and cause our filters to fail? These are important questions that both users and designers need to consider as Location Based Services become more integrated into society, but unfortunately, I can’t give you answers to these questions and neither can anyone else.
It’s hard to say what changes will result from LBS when they are fully adopted. We can’t know how they will be used until everyone is using them, and even then it will take time for usage trends to become apparent. In Geri Gay’s words, “the use of any tool potentially transforms the activity in which it is used, and, reciprocally, tools are transformed in the process of their use.” Whatever the changes, it is clear LBS offer opportunities to reconnect that may begin to offset the distraction of regular mobile phone use. Now, maybe instead of texting through a meal, LBS users will be able to quickly find their friends, get a discount at a local café, and while talking and eating discover a local event to attend together. Whether giving users incentives to explore their environment, connecting people with each other face-to-face, or providing relevant information in real time, Location Based Services have the promise to enhance our interactions with our environment and the people around us, bringing us back from the anti-social distraction caused by mobile phones.
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