Vicinity Chat

Interface Design

In the basic scenario, the Vicinity Chat interface contains three parts: the proximity meter, the messaging window and the vicinity preference controls.

The proximity meter, shown in Figure 1, identifies visible people -- people who have chosen to make themselves visible to you. The radar-screen interface continuously updates according to the location of all users in the system, and to communicate with a user, you click on a user's icon to enter the messaging interface. By looking at the proximity meter, you can see which people have revealed their location and which others are indicating they are somewhere in the area.

Figure 1: The proximity meter interface. The center block represents the user of the device. The users in the upper right have chosen to reveal only their vicinity, while the users distributed around the bull's eye have chosen to reveal their specific location. The text at the bottom of the screen indicates that this user has chosen to reveal her vicinity (versus location) and is allowing anyone to send a chat message to her.

Figure 2: The messaging interface, in chat mode. The user heidi_groves specified a preference for chat (versus asynchronous messages).

Figure 3: User Preference Controls. This user has selected to reveal geographic vicinity and allow people to send chat messages.

In the second scenario, when different types of people are involved, the proximity meter now includes a "degree bar" which allows the user to control how many degrees of acquaintances can be shown at once in the interface. In a separate preference screen, the user sets up the definitions and boundaries for these degrees of acquaintances.

Figure 4: Proximity Meter, displaying the users in the surrounding area. (Click on the image to see how interface would change depending on the value on the degree bar.)