[-empyre-] week one | mobile apps and environmental performance

[Babak Fakhamzadeh]

An excellent question, Dale!

Indeed. A decade or so ago, when Google Maps was still 'fresh', I was
very much looking into unlocking the power of Google Maps to enrich
the user's experience (in whatever the context of the application
was). Now, however, as you point out, location-based services all
converge on offering almost the exact same experience; providing
nearly identical tools with nearly identical information. As a
consequence, user experiences become less and less unique: say you're
visiting a city you've not been to before. You, and everyone else, end
up using the exact same tools (Lonely Planet, Foursquare,
TripAdvisor), and end up being directed to the exact same locations,
traveling the exact same routes.
This, while everyone really hopes/wants to have an experience that's
unique to them, while all eating at the same (highest rated)
restaurants and going to the same (highest rated) museums, looking at
the exact same objects. And, this unification of the experience is
amplified by fewer and fewer tools being at the users' disposal. (The
only guidebook series that stands a chance of surviving is a
struggling Lonely Planet, the only location-based gamification
platform is a struggling Foursquare.)
What I'm trying to achieve, with Kompl, but also what we were doing
with Dérive app, is to put the joy back in the journey and make the
experience unique to the user, an experience that can, specifically in
the case of Dérive app, can not be copied, as it depends on the here
and now. To do so, the user will have to step back from accessing
'total information awareness', which is what Kompl does by obfuscating
information until the user is close enough. Because we don't provide a
map, nor directions, and because the user's device really has to be
physically closer for the app to provide more information, I hope to
achieve the user's exploration of the urban space on his own terms.
(Of course, it's not very difficult for the user to circumvent Kompl's
restrictions, though currently the venue's name is only revealed
within a few hundred meters, but circumventing requires the user to
actively make the decision to circumvent, which will, in many cases,
be enough to not do it in the first place. Furthermore, Kompl works
without an internet connection, so if the user is abroad, without 3G
access, it's already less likely he's able to circumvent anything.)

There's some more background on this on our 'About' page:
http://komplapp.com/about/
--
Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com | http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com

Ask me for my PGP public key to send me encrypted email.


On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 7:13 AM, Dale Hudson <dale.hudson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Thanks, Babak, for this description of Kompi — and thanks, Jeff and Wendy, for asking for it.
>
> Babak, I’m really intrigued by the visualization as a list or as a compass rather than as a map, which some people have described as a web 3.0 hegemony. You seem to be moving further and further away from the commercially available base maps of Google in these three projects. I’m wondering whether you could tell us more about the ideas that drive this shift.
>
> Best,
> Dale
>
> On Nov 5, 2015, at 4:21, Babak Fakhamzadeh <babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Currently, in Kompl, the user can not set the level of obfuscation,
>> though it would only require exposing a few underlying parameters to
>> make this possible. An intriguing thought, though in practice that
>> might just result in users looking for the edges of what's available
>> (that is, all or nothing), whereas, I suspect, the 'right' level of
>> obfuscation lies somewhere in 'the middle'.
>>
>> The obfuscation currently works such that more and more information on
>> venues is made available as the user gets closer. Or, to think of it
>> differently, as the amount of information matters less and less (as
>> the venue is getting closer and closer and the user can just go and
>> look for himself), more information becomes available.
>> For venues that are 'far' away, only the distance to the venue, the
>> direction, and one or two keywords, are made available, where at least
>> one of the keywords is related to the user's initial search query. As
>> opposed to, say, Foursquare, it's not possible (purposefully!) to look
>> for, say, 'Italian restaurants', but only for 'Mediterranean
>> restaurants'. For a venue that matches that request and is too far
>> away for being made available in sufficient detail (currently, between
>> about 500 and 1000 meters), only the distance, the direction and, in
>> this case, the type of restaurant is made available to the user. But,
>> because we only return venues that have been given 'good' reviews, the
>> user can be certain that all returned venues are interesting/good
>> 'enough'.
>>
>> On getting lost, the app (again, purposefully) does not provide a map
>> (but does provide a compass, or, radar). The very idea is that the
>> user, only knowing the distance and direction to a venue, will have to
>> find their own way.
>> So, yeah, getting lost, if with a rough goal, is very much the point
>> :) And, hopefully, facilitated by the app.
>>
>> (As I mentioned, if you're interested, let me know and I will add you
>> (and anyone else who's interested) to our beta program.)
>> --
>> Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com | http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com
>>
>> Ask me for my PGP public key to send me encrypted email.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Jeff Schmuki <jschmuki at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hello Babak, We enjoyed learning about your projects. Wendy is especially
>>> intrigued by your most recent app that “obfuscates location information”.
>>> Can the user determine the level of clarity? Is there the possibility of
>>> getting lost?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Wendy + Jeff
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