The Desire to Inscribe Meanings onto Places is not Fulfilled by Social Platforms.
From Cave of the Hands 7300 BC to modern Graffiti, it’s a fundamental human desire to inscribe meanings onto places, to leave long-lasting messages for future visitors, to say “I was here. I experienced this.” However, mainstream Social Media Platforms detach us from the physical world, because they are time-based, not place-based.
7300 BC - 700 AD
Cave of the Hands
3rd Century AD
Roman Graffiti on Pyramid
Today
Graffiti
PROduct
Blur-to-reveal: Being here is essential
Motivate users to physically be there to post and discover messages in real-world places.
Aligned with the psychology “places anchor experiences and emotions.”
Re-establish connection with places and retrieve the amazing feeling of “being here.”
Place-Based Memory Collection
Curate your own posts, your friends’ posts, and your saved posts on all corners of the Earth
Visit Beautiful memories with friends at anytime, any place
Zoom in and out, browse at different scales
“Virtual Town Square” Engage with Local Community
Participate in public discourses or discover events that are local, relevant, and authentic.
Never missing out: Messages wit most likes and replies rise to the top.
Record to share your discovery with friends with just a few clicks!
Privacy Protection: Toggle Between Private and Public Mode
Effective address users’ concerns about sensitive location data
Can choose between “Friends” or “Everyone” when posting or discovering
Message sent 1 hour after hitting the “post” button! No location data leak!
White Paper Research
Places Anchor memories and Emotions
60%
stronger emotional responses to physical interactions compared to viewing photographs
Scannell & Gifford. (2010). “Defining place attachment: A tripartite organizing framework”.
70%
participants associate specific life events with physical locations
Lewicka, Maria. (2011). “Place attachment: How far have we come in the last 40 years?”.
Sharing Place-Based Personal Experiences Increase Community Engagement
30%
increase in campaign engagement withlocalized narratives
Dang et al. (2021). “Evidence on the Relationship between Place Attachment and Behavioral Intentions”.
34%
increase in social media sharing intentions when audiences were perceived local
Rishbeth et al. (2013) “Place Attachment and Memory: Landscape of Belonging as Experienced Post-migration”.
Competitive Analysis & the gap
NO Low-Maintenance Way To Share Place-Based Memories Across Time
SnapMap
FEATURE: Real-time location sharing
WEAKNESS:
Ephemeral messages
Privacy concerns
Meetup
FEATURE: Event-based local community platform
WEAKNESS:
Only for promoting pre-organized events
Pokémon GO
FEATURE: Digital gamified interactions in real-world places
WEAKNESS:
Prioritize virtual rewards over connection to places
Geocaching
FEATURE: GPS-Based Treasure Hunting
WEAKNESS:
Significant efforts to create and maintain geocaches
Unattractive UI Desing
To Connect
share genuine, authentic feelings with local community
100%more authentic descriptions if experiences are recorded right on site.
Discover Places and Events
To Discover
“Virtual Town Square”: Discover Events and Public Discourses
83%use social platforms to discover local events
67%participate in public discourses
User Interview Questions
Describe a memorable/meaningful place to you.
What happened at that place? Why is it memorable/meaningful to you?
When do you recall memories there? How do you preserve them?
Have you ever shared a place/your experiences at a place with others? How do you share it?
If there is a product that allows you to leave long-lasting messages at a place, what would you do with it?
Selected User Survey Questions
What do you usually use social media for?
How important is privacy when sharing content tied to a physical location?
Do you frequently use Close-Friends story on Instagram?
Do you find it difficult to describe a meaningful place to someone who’s never been there before?
What would motivate you to use this app?
Personas
Reminiscent College Senior
Frustrations:
I have to move to a new city for job after graduating and be far away from family and friends. I’ll miss my college life so much!
I want to have spontaneous hangouts with friends, but Real-time Location Sharing make me feel under surveillance.
Core Needs:
Recollection of college experiences that I can frequently look back at when feeling reminiscent
Value privacy protection of sensitive location data
“FOMO” First-Year Student
Frustrations:
Fear Of Missing Out, but keeping an eye on bullet boards, email lists, group chats to stay on tune with campus events is exhausting.
Everyone is so busy! It’s difficult to schedule meetups and discover new places in New Haven with friends.
Core Needs:
Easily discover and spontaneously join campus events
Effectively share places and location-specific experiences with busy friends
testing & improvements
4 main improvements
Based feedback from 50 students users, I continually iterated my design over the span of 4 weeks, with 3 major improvements.
1. Improve aR message interaction
From “Approach to See”, to “Click to Expand”, to “Center to Expand.”
Based on user feedback, enabled reading and expanding message with one hand.
Stabilizing Algorithm: bubbles expand if hover time >= 1 second.
From “Colorful Bubbles with Uniform Size”, to “Colorful Bubbles with Various Discoverability” and Expand to Clean Text Boxes.
Based on user feedback, keeping the iconic colorful bubbles while improving accessibility.
3. Reconfiguring Navigation buttons
Collected “Times of Clicking” Data from user testing.
Made the 4 most noticeable icons correspond to 4 main user flows.
Redesigned Navigation UI to make commonly used buttons noticeable and easy to click with one hand.
4. AR Navigation
Learned from User Testing that 2D Map Navigation distracted users from real-world engagement and message discovery.
Replaced 2D Map with 3D AR Map to improve immersion and connection to real-world places.
Final Design
Explore Interactive Prototype
Explore 4 Main User Flows: Discover Message, Post Message, Capture Moment, and View Profile.
Style guide
Design System
Takeaways
What I’d do differently next time
Communicating with developers as early as possible
Explore different ways to organize and display messages
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