Bruce Sterling gave a talk at Lift09 in France last year called “Shaping Things”. As usual, he gave a fascinating, somewhat stream-of-consciousness talk that managed to connect lots of seemingly disparate topics, from spimes to RFIDs to design to tranaparency to recycling.
His thoughts about tag clouds and industrial design made something click for me. He talked about how tag clouds had such promise, but are now revealing their weaknesses. What happens when the tags/words go away? Or evolve?
He transitioned smoothly from tag clouds into industrial design. Industrial designers make coherent things, and name them. But what about the components of the objects? They need tags too. So we end up with tags, and sub-tags, and sub-sub-tags, until we’re left with an organizational mess.
We need a way to filter and and organize.
The same thing is happening with location-based applications.
Location-based apps are hot as hell these days. They were the app-star of SXSWi this year, and new services are popping up all over the place. Personally, I’m using FourSquare, Gowalla, and Whrrl just to get a sense of what they have to offer.
Yes, checking in with multiple services is a pain, but it’s worth it to me to see how they evolve.
But I see another problem emerging, and that’s filtering. Any time I check in, I’m presented with a list of nearby spots. Gowalla seems to be more precise in locating me, but regardless I’m presented with x places. When the place I’m really at doesn’t show up, it’s another step, and often a slow one, to get it to appear. As often as not I just skip it.
I was at the airport the other day. When I went to check in I found listings for half a dozen gates, several restaurants, the Admirals Club, and specific baggage claim areas. It wouldn’t surprise me to see specific airplane seats and bathroom stalls very soon. During SXSWi, I saw checkins for bathroom lines, bus stops, and specific rooms in restaurants. I even saw someone’s moustache listed as a location, and some lucky friend had checked in. Amusing, for sure, but it makes the services much less useful.
We need a way to filter the locations, and fast, or the apps will become unusable and even more tedious.
