Designing for location sharing to mitigate situations of social awkwardness.

摘要

People often ask, "Where are you?" in daily conversations. Knowing friends' locations is for social connections, social gathering, accountability, and self-presentation. There are many location-sharing services (LSS) for the above purposes. The public, however, has trouble with the existing LSS, regarding privacy, mixed relationships, social pressure, unwanted attention, and hiding one's location from friends. These concerns stop them from using LSS.;In order to eliminate these concerns, we propose Longitude. (1) For privacy, Longitude users only share snapshots of their locations when their friends request. All location requests are recorded in Longitude Log. (2) For mixed social relationships, the users only share their specific locations with a strong tie. Longitude uses the contact frequency to decide whether a friend is a strong tie or weak tie. (3) For attention management, the users can broadcast their locations based on how much attention they want. (4) For hiding from friends, the users can have a safe excuse to do it.;A user study evaluated our design. Longitude Log helped the users to be aware of how others viewed their location information. Controlling location disclosure based on the contact frequency was favorable. The contact frequency was also a good way to sort friends. Still, the participants had a hard time understanding how Longitude helped them hide from their friends. Based on the results, we refined Longitude design.;Our design provides the implications for future LSS development. Until people are free of concerns, they would not start using LSS on a daily basis.