Some idle chat over lunch at the DGI conference
yesterday got me thinking about personal maps. By personal maps I mean
the digital maps we use every day on our laptops and smartphones; Google,
Apple, Open Street Map and the rest.
Obviously the huge draw of these maps is that they
are interactive and searchable, not only can you find where you’re going but
you can find your nearest coffee shop, railway station on pub. Or rather you
can find the nearest one of those that the map provider has decided to list
(for whatever reason). I used to work for what was effectively an SEO agency
and as a result I find this ‘searchability’ and the personalisation of results
very interesting. Far from being (as some critics originally suggested) a
uniform and boring representation of the world these mapping applications
deliver an incredibly varied user experience. Obviously there is a debate to be
had about the amount of influence commercial bodies have over what the majority
of people will regard as a true representation of the world (which is the
reason for Open Street Map).
However I want to take a simple ‘out of interest view’
on the personalisation of user experience that exists with the modern digital
map. We know that Google (and the other search engines) personalise results
based on previous search history and a range of social metrics as well as providing
auto complete suggestions that are an amalgamation of popular searches and
search history. This seems to be similar for maps with two major differences.
The first is obviously the location factor, if you are searching Google from a
desktop it can make a rough guess at your location based on IP and will
localise searches based on geographic terms you enter (e.g. pubs in Putney).
If you are using Google maps with a GPS enabled device however this becomes
much more specific to the extent that a more nebulous search (local pubs) is likely
to return relevant and accurate results.
These results are then of course affected by the second difference; advertising. On a normal Google search page pay per click advertising entries
are (relatively) distinct from the organic search results. In Google maps this
is somewhat less clear and the ordering of results by relevance (A to whatever)
does appear to be impacted by this. For example when I search ‘local coffee
shops’ from my laptop in West London result A is in East London about 7 miles
away, not really local for a city! (a lot of the other results are quite close
though)
Anyway the sum of all this is that two people
standing in the same place searching for the same thing on Google maps
(assuming they are not browsing incognito) are likely to get very different
results or at least results in a very different order. Now this got me thinking
of an interesting experiment/gimmick/probably impossible business idea...
If what you see on your map is determined by where
you have been and what you have searched before then what if you could swap
with someone else’s history? Ignoring the obvious data protection issues for a
second this could be quite interesting. Say I go to Manchester for the weekend
with some friends, I don’t really know Manchester that well and like most
people I am quite lazy when it comes to researching things. As a result which
restaurants I eat at and which bars I go to are likely to be heavily influenced
by what comes up to on a Google maps search (pending no terrible reviews). Well
what if I could download someone else’s personalised search (not the history
just the algorithm results)? Then I could end up visiting a completely
different set of places that I would never have been to otherwise.
It’s like a horribly impersonal 21st century
version of letting your friend’s friend who you’ve never met organise the trip,
it might be fun though. With the added bonus that you can’t yell at a search
engine for suggesting a rubbish gig.
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