WANDERLUST Collaborative exploration for a more interesting world

Overview Problem & Solution Contextual Inquiry Task Analysis Results Representative Tasks Sketches An app to find and share nearby events and points of interest in real-time. Formerly known as “Smell the Roses”

Solution Finding interesting places "in the field" is difficult Twitter et al. provide real time information, but difficult to filter by relevance Apply Geo-tagging techniques to large data repositories to present customers with data about nearby events and locations Problem

Contextual Inquiry Two environments: In the field - Pike Place, Olympia farmer's market, etc Preliminary research - finding hiking trails, plan trip to Canada/San Francisco Mainly locals, "simulated" tourism

Contextual Inquiry Results Talking to friends/locals popular, but not always reliable. Conversely, Websites have too much data; difficult to filter by location, especially in the field Services like Twitter useful for real-time information, but again, no set way to filter out relevant info No good way to share interesting places - either lost in the noise or no real audience. Many tools too unwieldy to use in-situ

Contextual Inquiry - Tasks/Conclusions Access more reliable information - larger resource pool Limit information by location Needs to be fast and easy What's going on right now Quickly and easily share information with friends and strangers Must be accessible for both parties

Task Analysis Results Researching at home not an issue - many resources available, no major time constraint Desired tasks: -Sharing events in real time -Find nearby locations easily Audience: Tourists, Locals, and everyone else

Task Analysis cont'd Information gathering usually results in too much or not enough information Websites = 1000's of opinions Locals = only 1 or 2 Need availability of internet combined with personalization of local experts

Task Analysis cont'd Time constraints and problems: Limited decision time prevents extensive searches - may move on and miss opportunities Inaccurate directions major problem - increase size of resource pool to eliminate mistakes

Task 1: Find nearby points of interest People willing to post/share information about locations, but difficult to filter by location - especially while mobile Filter available data by location - only nearby POIs are shown to user Useful data is easily available to user, noise is filtered out

Task 2: Create/Mark a point of interest Remembering/sharing interesting locations has problems: Lost in noise and/or forgotten before creation Users submit interesting locations -Build up database of POIs for users to search Automatically geotagged Mainly power users - 80:20 rule

Task 3: Ping presence of event in real time Cool stuff gets missed because events expire before people can be notified Prioritize events happening right now. Help users find nearby events before they end

Sketches

Summary Users need a way to filter relevant data about their immediate area Mobile solutions are scarce Wanderlust helps people find and share interesting locations without digging through half the internet to get there