Grumplestiltskin » apps

Location Based Death Match

EDubya — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 06:02:39 +0000

Before I get into this, let me first say that there is room enough (and users enough) on the magical interwebs for both of these apps. Web apps are not like Highlanders. There can and should be more than one. Like I said yesterday, conclusions had been reached after our great donut / bakery caper. Using both Foursquare and Gowalla side by side for about a week, I feel I’ve got a pretty comprehensive understanding of how they stack up against each other.

Checking In

Checking In: There is no competition here. Gowalla takes it hands down, for one simple reason. Their GPS works. I’m certainly no expert on the backend of how you would implement GPS, but Gowalla just uses it smarter in interaction. When I open the Gowalla app, it was never less than 100% accurate in determining where I was, and if my location was not in the database, it presented the nearby locations in the database in order of closeness. Sounds like a no-brainer? I think so too. Guess what else… it won’t LET you check into a venue that you are not within a reasonable distance from. GOOD WORK, GUYS. Adding venues could not be easier, just a name and a category and confirmation via map (smart…again) and you’re done. One small issue, once you create a venue, you must check in to it separately. I can think that there may be rare occasions where you might not want to check in to a venue you just added, but it’s got to be far and away the exception. I’d either check someone in automatically or offer an opt out.

By contrast, when I open up Foursquare, the list of venues is presented in two sections, “nearby favorites” and “nearby”. I don’t believe there was a single occasion where Foursquare accurately presented my location in either of those options. Routinely, I would have to use the search function to find my current location. This could be made SO MUCH BETTER by showing venues in order of distance OR at minimum including the closest places where I have checked in at the top of the “nearby” list. If I am standing smack dab in the middle of a venue that I have checked in at multiple times, or am even the mayor of, there is NO EXCUSE for why that venue doesn’t show up before other “nearby” locations that I have never even visited. Bad interaction design. This also lends itself to users creating duplicate venues, after not being able to find their current location because they have to go looking too hard for it. At the movies today, I found three different entries for the theater, each named slightly differently. This sort of dovetails into another problematic issue discussed previously where when you click “not in the list” for your current location and then enter the name of the location, if it happens to match something else in the database, EVEN AN HOUR AWAY, that is where you are checked in. It happened to me again this weekend. Again…should not be possible to check into a venue that you are not reasonably close to. Also, just as an added gripe, having to change the city if you are not in one of the small number of “official” cities when you add venues is a pain in the ass. In a social network where a vast database of venues is integral to gameplay, less is not more. More is more. Make it as easy as possible to add venues. You know where I am via GPS, you should pre-populate the city field with that city or don’t pre-populate it at all.

Gameplay: Other than a commonality with unlocking achievements and badges/pins, the two apps have a very different approach, so it really comes down to personal preference.

Stinkin' Badges

Foursquare has a couple different things going on. There is a points-based gameplay where each city has a weekly leaderboard. I actually have no idea what, if anything, special happens if you finish the week on top, but I can tell you that our marathon adventure yesterday had something like 26 check-ins and it was pretty easy to rack up a RIDONKULOUS number of points in doing so. That’s not a complaint. For multiple checkins on the same day, you end up with a “trip bonus”, so for the second check-in I got 2 bonus points, third had 3 bonus points, up to the last check-in with 26 bonus points in addition to any other points I received for adding venues, making my first visit, etc. It was pretty amazing. At the end of the day, I was far and away the leader in SF, but fell behind by the end of Sunday when the boards are reset. Separate from this there are “mayorships” up for grabs at each venue. Depending on who you ask, this is either rip-roaring fun or fury inducing. Part of the problem may be the check-in issues above making it pretty easy to “cheat” and check-in wherever you want from the comfort of your couch. Either way, it’s either something you get into or not. I definitely get into it, but the lack of check-in safeguards kinda hinder full enjoyment. I may be hyper competitive, but I play fair and I like it when you *have to* play fair.

Gowalla doesn’t have a user vs. user gameplay, other than bragging rights over pins and stamps. However, every user is out to collect virtual items that they find along their travels. The lower numbered your item is, the more sought after it is. Neat. You can either collect and “vault” the items or you can drop them when you add or are an early visitor to new locations for “founder” status. To this point, I’ve never had enough items to vault any vs. drop them for founder status at new venues, but I’ve found this element to be nothing short of delightful. Add in that you can track the ownership of the items that you pick up (like travel bugs for you geocachers out there) and it’s just awesome. I’m just a little bitter that I left my little beatnik at the pet store in exchange for founder status. He was pretty cute. If I have any complaint, it is that I would like to have more items in my pack, particularly if I’ve been adding and founding a bunch of new venues all over town. Seems like that user behavior should be rewarded a bit more routinely.

Friends: This may be the one category where Foursquare takes it for me. Foursquare can scour your gmail, twitter and facebook friends lists for people you know already on the service. Alerts from those that you choose to add default to on, meaning you will get pings to your phone from any of their checkins, EXCEPT when they are in different cities, which can actually be kind of frustrating. If you have a friend that is in another city, you can’t get updates about where they are or what they are doing, and you just might want that. You can also see who your friends are connected to, which will often lead you to more folks that you might know.

Gowalla can check your twitter and facebook friends, BUT will only show you other users that have signed up AND connected Gowalla to those respective accounts. Also, no gmail check. womp wah. Also…you can’t see who your friends are connected to. This is problematic when you receive a friend request and don’t have the context of their network. If someone is using an unfamiliar name, you may just bounce their request because you can’t see that they are connected to other folks you know, which may tip you off to who *they* are. This could use some definite work.

Conclusion: The overall winner by knockout is gowalla. Since the fundamental functionality of the site hinges on the usability of the check-in process, ya gotta go with gowalla. The gameplay is a bonus. The little things, like automatically capitalizing every word while adding a location name (LOVE YOU GUYS) really set it apart. There is not a pixel on the web or iPhone app that does not look like it had meaningful design. I like my apps like I like my steak, well done.

One Dozen The Hard Way

EDubya — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:16:29 +0000

If you follow me on foursquare or gowalla (I’M SO SORRY), you already know all this, but anyway…

As a little background, I’ve been using foursquare and gowalla in tandem for the last week or so as an experiment. I consider putting websites and apps through the paces part of my job, but it is also no secret that I just like to do it. That’s how it ended up being my job in the first place. This being the first Saturday with no plans in a really long time, we were drunk with possibilities. Up early, despite our best intentions to sleep in, we formulated a plan based on a throw-away idea from @aaronh. Because we are both huge nerds and hyper competitive, we set out on two missions this morning.

1. “One Dozen the Hard Way” – Visit 12 donut shops, procuring a treat from each one to compile a one dozen set of assorted donuts.

2. “Baker’s Dozen of Bakeries” – Visit 13 bakeries, buying a delectable tidbit from each one.

The key to ridiculous challenges like this is careful planning. We made lists of our destinations and created a route using Google maps, to lessen any unnecessary zig-zagging. How awesome is it to be able to add multiple destinations on your directions map and drag and drop them in the order you want? Completely awesome.

Adventure Haul

Originally uploaded by ahurley

We only had one real guideline. We decided that actually patronizing the establishments was key to our challenge. First, not doing so felt like cheating. Second, we would get to experience places in and around our neighborhood that we might never otherwise visit. Third, since we would be entering all these places on gowalla and foursquare, we felt there should be some benefit to the actual business owners. Hopefully, since many of them would be new to the system, it would result in new business for the shops, as more people would have an opportunity to be exposed to them on the sites. You know there are folks that HAVE TO visit every venue in the database. Don’t play dumb. You know who you are.

We left the house a little after ten and finished up around four o’clock. It took much longer than expected, though we did have a break for turkey burgers in the middle of it. Lunch?? How could we have LUNCH? Well, truth be told, though we had a backseat FULL of donuts and bake shop goodies, we each ate exactly one donut. ONE. Yet, we both felt grossly stuffed as though we had eaten every last one of them. It had to be the smell in the car. I seriously think that if you just dabbed a little donut scented oil under your nose, you would feel sated all day. We only had a few speed bumps along the way with shops that had closed or changed hands, rendering them a duplicate. However, because we were prepared (woohoo), we had back-ups for any such issue.

We finished EXHAUSTED. Plenty of UX comparison. Conclusions have been reached. More on that tomorrow.

Foursquare – I Wish I Liked You Better

EDubya — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:55:30 +0000

foursquare

Originally uploaded by EdubyaD

Foursquare is an iPhone (and other mobile) app that essentially dumps mobile GPS, Social Media and game theory in a big giant blender and hits puree. I like GPS. I like Social Media. I like gamesmanship, maybe a little too much. This should be RIGHT UP MY ALLEY. In theory, it is.

You use your phone to “check-in” to different venues where you happen to be, and if you make a habit of it, you also collect badges for any number of achievements, like being out past 3am, becoming a regular, going out for ten nights, etc. You are also pit against other users to compete for the title of “mayor” of these establishments, based on the frequency and total number of your visits. This is all good fun to me. I saw a post the other day where the author was quitting foursquare because of the spirit of the competition. I get that, but I don’t mind it so much. What I can’t abide are the UX issues that suck the joy out of playing along.

I seem to have bad luck / timing with site downtime. Countless times, I have opened up the app to have an error show up when I attempt to check in. I’m not sure what the actual downtime is for them, but whatever it is, it seems to coincide with many of my outings. More annoying than this, however, is when you take the time to enter the information to add a venue to the app and then submit it only to have it fail with aforementioned sporadic downtime…and NOT preserve all the information you had entered in your form. Why?? This seems like a pretty standard safety to preserve a decent user experience, but alas…nope.

Speaking of adding venues, twice when I have tried to check in, I have been unable to find my current location in the list of existing venues. No big deal. Upon adding the venue, I click “Check-in” only to be checked in NOT where I am, but rather in a location that happens to have the same name, but is miles and miles away. The first was 50 miles away, then the second something like 70+ miles away. I mean, you know where my phone is, WHY would you do that? Why is there no confirmation screen when you add a venue that includes the address, so you can either confirm or say “ACTUALLY, NO…I AM NOT, IN FACT, IN SANTA ROSA. THAT IS A COUPLE HOURS DRIVE FROM HERE.”

Added bonus: NO WAY TO CORRECT THIS ON THE WEBSITE. What? How can that be? Yeah, I can’t believe it either. Are they worried about someone gaming the game? Well, then it seems kinda stupid that they would allow check-ins from hours away then, doesn’t it?

Also, noted for lameness is the part where if you actually go to the website and click to “browse the content” in another geographical area, that actually changes where your account is based. GREAT. You *should* have the ability to change where your account is based, but you should also have CLEAR VERBIAGE on your controls to let you know that *that* is what you are doing. Come on, guys. Super frustrating. If you are not clear with simple stuff like this, a user’s tolerance is already going to be worn down by the time they deal with the bigger UX issues.

As mentioned previously, Foursquare is about as close to a spouse lojack as you can get. It is helpful to know where @aaronh is gallivanting around town, but the UX issues with the app are making it hard to love, or even like. It wouldn’t bug me so much if I didn’t think there was a nugget of something really fun buried in there. Fixable, which makes it all the more frustrating.