Overview
This research examines the potential that proximity-based applications can have in encouraging interaction between nearby people. Next to you, a prototype social application developed at the University of Tampere applies gamification to increase awareness of nearby people and encourage social interaction, by
App Description
The users create their profile by uploading a profile picture and inserting “whispers”. After at least one whisper has been saved, the user’s profile is activated and can be discovered by other users.
The main view contains a list of connections discovered by the user. The first time two users are within each other’s proximity (Bluetooth range), a connection between them is created, and their first whispers are exchanged. Users can edit their whispers and rearrange their order, determining which will be received first by their connections.
Creating a new whisper and rearranging the whispers' order
The order of whispers on the profile determines the order in which they will be received by other users
If two users meet again (after at least 5 hours have passed), another exchange of whispers automatically takes place. Users cannot receive more whispers (from each connection) than they have created in their own profile. By tapping on a connection, a user can view another user’s profile, containing the whispers they have received from them (depending on how many times they have met). The user can tap and hold on a whisper to like it.
Left: list of connections; Middle: user's profile; Right: Achievements
After a connection between two users has been established, they can exchange text messages by navigating to each other’s profile and tapping on the “Messages” button. If they are in proximity, they can initiate a Face-to-Face confirmation: an image containing 5 figures is shown on user’s A screen, and one of the 5 figures is randomly shown on user’s B screen. User B needs to show his/her screen to user A (provided that they are meeting face-to-face), and user B needs to tap on the corresponding figure on his/her own screen. The process must be repeated successfully 3 times, before a countdown timer runs out! After the confirmation is completed, the users cannot repeat it until the next time they meet. The first time a successful F2F confirmation is achieved, the two users unlock each other’s profile picture, which is now visible on their profile and list of connections.
A connection's profile. The user can like one of their whispers by tapping and holding
The users are awarded with unlocking achievements for using the application further: collecting more profiles, receiving many likes for a whisper, sending and receiving messages etc. Each achievement has three ranks; bronze, silver and gold. The users are notified when a new contact is in proximity through push notifications, or when they have received a new whisper from an existing connection, when one of their whispers has been liked, when they have received a message or F2F request, or when they have unlocked an achievement.
The chat view and the Face-to_Face confirmation game
Methods
A set of focus groups were conducted to evaluate the design concept (n=18 participants). Based on the results, there was a second development iteration to improve the design and implement additional features. A field trial with 162 participants was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the application, investigating the application's overall user experience over a period of seven weeks. The study was held at two university campuses. Usage data were collected from each participant. In addition, participants evaluated their experience through two online questionnaires, the 1st one week after installing the app, and the 2nd at the end of the field trial.
Results
The application managed to encourage various interactions that we argue would not have otherwise taken place. The specific effect of the designed features was challenging to measure, which was made more challenging by insufficient critical density and practical limitations in the trial. Based on the findings we provide a list of design considerations for applications aiming to encourage social interaction among strangers, and similar evaluation trials, including the following: 1) Adjusting the definition of "nearby" based on the context and location of use could be crucial to forming a critical density of users early on; 2) Offer users information about where to look for nearby users using GPS technology (without revealing their exact location due to privacy concerns), and award the discovery of other users through the achievement system, supporting progression; 3) Include means to ensure good quality of shared content, e.g. through promoting 'liked' information and demoting 'disliked' whispers; 4) Support engagement with the application through a content feed, which gives easier access to shared content from nearby users;
Implementation
The first service provides a REST API for CRUD operations on a Mongo database. The client (Android app) uses HTTP requests to write or read data from the database, via the Volley library (requests and responses are bundled in JSON objects).
The second service uses socket connections with the client apps (using SocketIO for both the client and the server) and is responsible for the chatting, Face-to-Face confirmation and push notification features of the app (real-time features). There is also a server-side only communication between the two services.
The Android app creates a Service, which is responsible for the periodic task of proximity scanning (with Bluetooth) and listening for incoming messages through the socket connection. The drag&drop list view used on the profile view was based on -this code-.
Related publications
Susanna Paasovaara, Kaisa Väänänen, Aris Malapaschas, Ekaterina Olshannikova, Thomas Olsson, Pradthana Jarusriboonchai, Jiří Hošek, and Pavel Mašek. 2018. Playfulness and progression in technology-enhanced social experiences between nearby strangers. In Proceedings of the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 537–548. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3240167.3240212
Susanna Paasovaara, Ekaterina Olshannikova, Pradthana Jarusriboonchai, Aris Malapaschas, and Thomas Olsson. 2016. Next2You: a proximity-based social application aiming to encourage interaction between nearby people. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM '16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 81–90. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3012709.3012742
Susanna Paasovaara, Ekaterina Olshannikova, Pradthana Jarusriboonchai, Aris Malapaschas, and Thomas Olsson. 2016. Next2You: a social application for nearby strangers. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM '16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 339–341. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3012709.3016063