Hung Truong: The Blog!

Automatic Checkins in Google Latitude

It looks like Google has updated their Latitude app with checkins, including automatic notifications and checkins (and checkouts).

When I developed Checkmate, there wasn't really a standard design for the auto-checkin behavior. Some users have mentioned that the app might work better by sending notification to check in, more like reminders. I've leaned towards fully automated checkins, myself.

Google seems to be taking a hybrid approach, which is pretty interesting. You get a notification the first time you arrive somewhere (probably only for places you've checked into before), and then an option to automatically check in after that.

I might end up building some kind of hybrid (or a simple option in settings) system in Checkmate to see if that works better in general. I wonder how Google is mitigating the cost of GPS usage in its Latitude app. I always figured that the thing keeping auto-checkin out of official apps is the fact that they run the battery down pretty hard.

Fun Trolling Facebook Polls (For Science (Actually Lulz)!)

I saw a Facebook Poll late last night that a friend had voted on. The question was something like “Which pair of shoes should I get?” The poll had twitpic.com links as answers, so the idea was that people look at the pics and let the guy decide which pair of shoes was better.

Apparently in Facebook Polls, you click on the answer to vote. And there's no unvote (you can vote for another choice, but you can't abstain after clicking). So people ended up clicking on the twitpic link thinking they'd see the image, and ended up accidentally voting on the poll. I fell for this, too. There were something like a couple thousand answers on that poll. I believe it's been removed now.

I figured I could do better with a more salient question, so I made one up myself. “Which pair of glasses look better on me?” I made the question have two twitpic links, which you can view here and here if you actually copy and paste them in. I figured people are naturally judgers, and something like helping someone choose glasses to wear is an easy task (plus you theoretically get to see pictures of faces, which people just love, consciously or subconsciously).

I started the poll late last night, which probably didn't help, but a few friends took the bait. I hope they forgive me as I did this for science the lulz! When I woke up this morning, there were currently 51 votes, from people I know, friends of friends, and even people two degrees out of my social network! I think it would be really interesting to see how this poll spreads through Facebook (assuming they don't shut it down first).

I guess now that this post is published, any scientific value is gone (since you could be reading from anywhere and vote for my poll non-virally). The main point is that when you design systems very rigidly (in Facebook's case, not letting people abstain from a poll, which believe it or not is a valid bit of information), interesting consequences pop up.

I'll keep checking the status of the poll and see if it actually blows up, whimpers and dies or gets taken down quickly.

Analysis Edit:

I think another reason that this poll is so effective is that it makes it seem that the person who voted is the originator of the poll. Check out the newsfeed formatting:

The voter's name is prominently displayed (though I blurred it) and the person who asked the question is nowhere to be seen.

Edit #1: The time is now about 12:40PM and the total number of voters has doubled to 99!

Edit #2: It's about 1:10PM and the number has doubled again to 201!

Edit #3: The time is around 1:24PM and there's 304 answers.

Edit #4: Alright, it's 1:35PM and there's 406 votes.

Edit #5: Wow. It's 1:41PM and there's 502 votes.

Edit #5: It's 1:48 and there are 621 votes.

Edit #6: I'm just going to simplify my updates now…

1:53PM – 716 votes

1:58PM – 811 votes

2:02PM – 904 votes

2:07PM – 1031 votes

2:16PM – 1282 votes

2:22PM – 1442 votes

2:27PM – 1619 votes

2:38PM – 2013 votes

2:46PM – 2393 votes

2:50pm – 2604 votes

2:54pm – 2811 votes

2:58pm – 3038 votes

3:04pm – 3408 votes

3:11pm – 3861 votes

3:14pm – 4142 votes

3:23pm – 4761 votes

3:39pm – 6169 votes

3:47pm – 6806 votes

3:51pm – 7198 votes

3:56pm – 7693 votes

4:00pm – 8010 votes

4:06pm – 8624 votes

4:10pm – 9038 votes

4:19pm – 10,013 votes!

4:28pm – 11,007 votes

4:37pm – 12,009 votes

4:46pm – 13,046 votes

4:53pm – 14,009 votes

5:04pm – 15,216 votes

5:09pm – 15,886 votes (dinnertime)

5:45pm – 19,764 votes

5:55pm – 20,722 votes

6:06pm – 21,829 votes

6:30pm – 24,104 votes

6:40pm – 25,013 votes

6:51pm – 26,001 votes

7:02pm – 27,014 votes

7:14pm – 28,013 votes

7:26pm – 29,001 votes

7:42pm – 30,373 votes

7:53pm – 31,124 votes

(mini break)

9:41pm – 38,332 votes

10:14pm – 40,175 votes

10:34pm – 41,360 votes

10:50pm – 42,232 votes

11:38pm – 44,690 votes

12:12am – 46,761 votes

12:51am – 47,677 votes

1:48am – 49,358 votes

Day 2

10:10am – 53,601 votes

10:31am – 53,812 votes

12:48pm – 55,418 votes

1:07pm – 55,598

1:36pm – 55,923

2:32pm – 56,470

4:41pm – 57,559

10:36pm – 59,078

1:51am – 59,426

EDIT: Facebook finally deleted the poll, with something like 60,000 votes last time I checked.

Instascriber: Automagically Add Content to Instapaper

I just “announced” a little web app that I've been developing off and on called “Instascriber.” It's basically a tool to help you populate your Instapaper reading list with stuff using an RSS Feed subscription model. If you use Instapaper a lot and use it to keep track of your reading list, you might want to automatically add new items, say from the New York Times Book section, into your Instapaper reading list. If you already know you'd like to read the content on Instapaper, it's a pain to manually add each thing you want to read.

With Instascriber, you can just set the feed you'd like to subscribe to. Instascriber will periodically check the feed for new items and add it to your Instapaper reading list automatically in the background. That's it. Boom!

For now, I'm considering the web app to be in beta. So let me know if you find bugs or anything.

U of M 2010 Mobile Apps Competition – FTW!

Continuing in my tradition of winning contests that I entered with very little expectation of actually winning, I got an email a week or two back about the University of Michigan 2010 Mobile Apps Competition that I entered in November. The competition is open to students, faculty and staff at the university. Since I'm working on a part time basis at the university, I figured I would enter a few of my apps. I chose Checkmate and ♥s Threadless, and made some awkward demo videos of each.

Checkmate ended up winning third place out of many many competitive entries (leaders and the best!), so I'm super happy about that. Here's a story in the University Record about it. The HiJack project that's been getting a lot of press was the grand prize winner. Props to those guys!

Winning a prize in this contest was a really nice way to start my year. It's really encouraging me to continue doing mobile apps and exploring what's possible.

When Interaction Design Goes Bad: Airport Terminals

I recently flew into the Detroit airport McNamara Terminal, and I made an observation that most of my fellow travelers probably made as well. That particular terminal consists of two long sides that branch out of the middle of the terminal. Our flight taxied to just about the farthest you can possibly be from the exit of the airport. Everyone had to walk across the furthest path (or take the tram) to get to the baggage claim and the airport exit. Why?

I read somewhere that airports used to get a lot of complaints about the baggage claim taking too long to get started. Travelers would have to wait at the carousel thing and probably got really bored. To fix that, the airports would drop people off at further gates, making them walk further. This longer walk caused the “wait time” at the baggage claim to be shorter, and they got less complaints. Perhaps that's what happened to me and my fellow travelers.

I would argue that the particular “fix” I described probably shouldn't be used anymore. Since most airlines charge people to check in bags, I think many don't even need to wait at the baggage claim anymore (myself included). The fix is an interesting psychological trick, but it doesn't actually buy anyone time, and it just makes me take longer to get out of the airport. I'd argue that this is interaction design gone bad, but I don't have a way to confirm that this strategy is the reason we were dropped off so far from the exit. The flight was getting in at 10:30 and we passed numerous free gates, so I can't think of any other good reason (maybe to save the plane some fuel?).