Design 1:
Home Screen:
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When Joe starts LocaShare, he sees the home screen shown in the figure. At a glance, he can see (i) how many social contacts are near him, (ii) whether (and how many) people have added him as a contact and (iii) the number of offers by stores near his current location. There are also two tabs that he can use to access his social and commercial contacts.
Upon clicking the link “view” near (i), he sees the names of social contacts that are near his current location. By clicking on the button “View Contact”, he can view further details. He can also choose to return back to the home screen.
Upon clicking the link “view” near (ii), he sees the names of people who added him as a contact. The relationship between Joe and that person (e.g., Susan) is not established till Joe also adds Susan as his social contact. By pressing the button “Set Permissions”, Joe can add Susan to his list. If he does not want to share his location information with Susan, he can choose to “Deny Request” and Susan would not be able to track his location (since he will not appear as her social contact). By selecting either “Set Permissions” or “Deny Request”, he can remove the person’s name from this screen (otherwise, LocaShare will keep reminding him till he takes one of the two actions). As in the previous case, he can also choose to return back to the home screen.
Upon clicking the link “view” near (iii), he sees a list containing thenames of stores that are offering discounts or sales in exchange for his location information. The list is sorted by the number of offers per store (decreasing order) and the distance of the store from Joe’s current location (increasing order). Also, the list can be color-coordinated (based on the amount and type of location information required) to help Joe decide quickly whether or not to view the offer(s) from the store. As in the previous cases, he can also choose to return back to the home screen.
Task 1: Add Social Contacts:
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Joe starts from the home screen and clicks on the tab “Social Contacts”. He is then taken to the screen shown here that can be considered the “Home Screen” to handle his social contacts. Here, he can (i) search for an existing social contact or (ii) add a new one. Since Bob is not on his contact list, he selects “Add New Contact”. He is then taken to the screen that shows the various settings he can use to control the amount and type of his location information that Bob can view. He first enters the contact’s name (Bob) in the text field. Since he is primarily interested in sharing his location information with Bob during the ski trip, he selects “Sunday River” on the map by clicking on the appropriate location (by zooming in/scrolling across the map/using other features that the map API provides). After receiving the selection from the click, Joe sees a feedback in the form of a keyhole marker. He can choose to add additional permissible locations, but in this scenario, he does not want to. He then enters 2 in the textfield for radius and selects the option of GPS coordinates for the value. Now, Bob will be able to see his GPS coordinates in a 2 mile radius around Sunday River. Joe can also select the frequency of share and selects it to be daily (since he wouldn’t be moving too far from Sunday River on an hourly basis). He selects a time range during which Bob can view his location. Here he selects 9am-9:30am. Suppose that he also chose to share between 11:30am and 4pm. In that case, Bob will not be able to view Joe’s location at 6pm (for example). He choose not to let Bob see his aggregated information and thus leaves the checkbox titled “Allow Aggregation?” blank. He then clicks the button called “Save Contact”. He can also cancel the form and start it again, if he wants to.
Now, Bob will receive a notification on his “Home Screen” that Joe added him as a contact. If he would also like to share his location, Bob can add him as a contact and the relationship would be established on LocaShare.
Task 2: View real-time location of social contacts:
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Once Bob adds Joe as a contact, Joe can now search for Bob in his social contacts. He sees the screen shown here that indicates Bob’s current location (depending on what Bob allowed him to view). Joe can also choose to view historical locations visited by Bob or Bob’s aggregated information. On the similar screen on Bob’s application, where Bob would be viewing Joe’s profile, Bob would see that the button “View Aggregated Information” would be disabled since Joe did not allow Bob to view his aggregated information.
Suppose that a month has passed since Joe added Bob to his contact list. Joe can view Bob’s historical data by clicking on the button called “View Past Locations”. He would then see this screen that shows Bob’s locations using markers on three different maps. These three maps correspond to a daily, weekly and monthly summary of Bob’s locations (based on the permissions that Bob set for Joe).
Task 3: View offers and opt-in to create commercial contacts:
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Joe starts from the home screen and clicks on the tab “Commercial Contacts”. He is then taken to the screen shown here that can be considered the “Home Screen” to handle his commercial contacts. Here, he can view various categories of products on a wheel. This visual representation helps him view various categories in a quick glance. Tiny numbers enclosed in circles indicate the number of offers by merchants/stores belonging to that category. Since Joe is at a ski resort and wants to buy some gear, he selects the wedge titled “Sporting Goods”. He is then taken to the next screen that shows him the list of stores selling sporting goods and having offers. Here, Rei happens to be the store offering the two discounts in this category. Since the two offers require different location information (either in type or amount), the actual location value is not displayed here. [Note: you can view the sketch in the “Home screen” section to see an example of the location information displayed below the store names]. The distance from his current location to Rei is also displayed (0.2 mi). Once he clicks on the region, he is taken to the next screen where he can see the two offers. Here we see that Rei is offering a 10% off in exchange for raw GPS coordinates. By default this would mean GPS coordinates in that state. We display Joe’s current GPS lat/long coordinates to help him visualize the exact information he will be sharing. The second offer involves a 25% discount in exchange for a weekly aggregate information. This means that LocaShare will aggregate Joe’s information into meaningful chunks and share them with Rei. In both cases, Joe can choose to accept or delete the offer by pressing the “Accept” or “Delete” buttons respectively. If he returns to the previous screen, these offers do not disappear from the screen and will be shown to him the next time he views the “Home Screen” for commercial contacts. Suppose that Joe decides to take Rei up on the first offer. He would now see the following screen that summarizes the information that Rei will receive and gives Joe to add Rei to a category (in case he wants it to be displayed in another category, or create a new category for this merchant/store). He can then save Rei as a contact by pressing the “Save Contact” button or cancel the offer by clicking “Cancel”. If he clicks on “Cancel”, he will be taken back to the “Home Screen” for commercial contacts.
Task 4: View aggregate information of social contacts:
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Since Alice wants to view Joe’s aggregate information, she first searches for Joe on her “Home Screen” for social contacts. She then sees Joe’s profile as seen in this sketch. At a glance, she can see that he is near Sunday River and so she is relived that he reached the resort safe and sound. When she clicks on “View Aggregated Information”, she sees the following screen. She can see a summary of Joe’s location on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Instead of a map view that showed Bob’s locations using markers, in this aggregated view, Alice can see a pie chart/wheel showing the amount of time Joe spent at various places. This data can be collected from Google Places API. Google Places API supports categorizing locations based on their “type” (such as, church, restaurant, store, bank, university, gym). Alice can choose to drill down and get additional details by selecting a wedge from the wheel. Suppose that she selected the category “Campground” (shown as a shaded region), she can see a list of places related to “Campground” that Joe has been to and the amount of time he spent at each place. Thus, she is able to keep track of her family member using LocaShare.
Task 5: Edit social contacts:
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Since Joe wants to modify the location permissions for Bob, he first searches for Bob on the “Home Screen” for social contacts. After he comes to Bob’s profile, he clicks on Bob’s icon/photo and comes to this screen. Here he view the amount and type of information that Bob can view about him. [Note: Suppose that during the trip Joe allowed Bob to view his aggregated information.]
Joe can see that Bob can see his current location as the lat/long in Cambridge, MA (his current location). He also sees the pie chart/wheel that describes the categorization of places that Bob was able to view about him. He can now choose to modify the permissions by clicking on the button called “Modify Permissions” or can choose to return by clicking “Cancel”. Once he clicks “Modify Permissions”, he taken to the permissions sketch described in task 1.
Task 6: Edit commercial contacts:
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Since this task started with Joe seeing an offer from Rei, he is led to this sketch by clicking on Rei’s icon in the screen described in task 3 (that shows the two offers provided by Rei). In this screen, Joe can view the current and aggregate information that Rei is able to view about Joe. Since a commercial contact is not editable by Joe (it was tied to the specific offer), he can only choose to continue sharing the information or delete the contact. If he happens to accept multiple offers from Rei (that require different types and/or amounts of location information), this screen would show a summary of entire information set that he is sharing with that one store. In that case, clicking on “Delete Contact” will stop Rei from accessing any of the pieces of information it was able to access previously. This is a more intuitive approach since it gives Joe control over the specific types and amount of location information he wants to share with Rei.