CS247: Human-Computer Interaction Design Studio

Milestone 4: Functional Prototype I

Let's Meet

Abstract

Let’s Meet is an app that allows friends to find one another at their meeting points. Our use case is when friends attempt to meet up at a predetermined location, but have trouble finding one another either because 1) the designated location is vague, like "Embarcadero Bart Station", or 2) there are too many people in the immediate vicinity (for example, during a festival or event). Let’s Meet removes the communication difficulty of calling one another and attempting to describe one’s exact location using nearby features, like buildings or street signs. Instead, users can use the combination of a constantly updating map, which will give locations accurate to a few hundred feet, combined with user-taken photos pinned onto the map, to find their friends. These photos provide rich media communication that allows users to precisely describe their location with images instead of words.

Instead of attempting to describe location by text, Let's Meet allows users to take photos or videos of their surroundings and share them, pinned to the proper map location, with friends who are trying to find them. We designed both a paper and digital mockup for testing for this idea.

Core Features

Based on the above use case, we have delineated a set of features that will be essential for this product.

Setup

Communication

Implementation progress

Adopting the kanban board method, completed items are marked as “done”, and items in progress are marked “in progress”. All other features are assigned a priority (P0, P1, etc)

Tasks according to desired features

Let's Meet Kanban Board (as of 8 May 2014)

Ready / Backlog

  • Connect to social media (Facebook OAuth, etc) P1
  • Notifications to friends when they are invited P0
  • Sync with Google Calendar / Facebook Events P1
  • Event auto-expires after everyone has left the location P0
  • Simple way to search for friends at the event P1
  • Enable private chat rooms between specific attendees at the event P0
  • “Footsteps” or bread-crumb trail tracking how far the user has wandered from his/her last photo-taking location P0
  • Auto-delete photos to remove clutter when users have updated their location P0

In progress

  • Full-fledged login page P0
  • Users are location-tracked P0
  • Pin these photos onto the map P1

Verify / Done

  • Create user identity
  • In-app event creation
  • In-app friend invitations based on phone contact list
  • Map can be viewed at event start
  • Text and photos appear on chat interface
  • Photos expand when clicked upon
  • More info about friend’s location appears when friend’s chat message is tapped
  • Chat room for all event attendees at once
  • Users appear as pins on map
  • Allow users to take location photos with their phone
  • Enable these photos to automatically appear in text chat

Design issues

Current UI issues are addressed in the bulleted list above. There are also a few design issues with our prototype that we hope to address in the next two weeks, after an initial round of user testing.

These include:

P0 : We need to figure out how to make it simple and seamless for users to use our app to find their friends. We hypothesize that users may not think about using the app until the event is actually in progress, and they are searching for their friends. User testing will be key in helping us decide if this hypothesis is true. If it is true, we would like to focus on designing a super-simple interface for users to add events that are happening right now (rather than forcing them to plan ahead for events in the future).

P0 : One issue that users might face when trying to find one another is the fact that after photos have been taken and pinned to a location, users may start to wander away from that location (rather than waiting exactly at that point). Thus, we want the photos to serve as “clues” along a sort of bread-crumb trail tracking the user’s current location. One possible design solution we have considered is to visualize a dotted path or “trail” showing where the user is currently walking in relation to their last-taken photo.

P1 : We want to make it easy for users to identify a specific friend and figure out how to get to that friend’s location. We are thinking about addressing this with a simple search bar, but there could also be added functionality (such as directions, or a map overlay) showing users exactly how to get to that friend’s current location, or perhaps even warning that friend that the user is hot on his/her trail.


© 2014 by Alex Wang, Angela Yeung, and Jessica Liu.