Grab a Fika – Facilitating face to face meetings in the mobile age

Paper in proceeding, 2014

This paper describes the rationale, design process and evaluation of the mobile application “Grab a Fika.” This application breaks the norm of effectiveness in regard of mobile applications, since it provides a method of meeting up and navigating that will not always give the easiest or most efficient means of transportation, but provides a novel view on how to find your friends. This is achieved by calculating and finding a café located in the geographical midpoint between the involved users. After doing this the application presents the user with simply an arrow pointing to the café and the distance to it, something that is not more efficient than agreeing on a time and place beforehand, but instead more interesting. Most of the applications in today’s market have the capacity to deeply engage the user. Despite their inherent entertaining and engaging qualities, these mobile applications detract from interpersonal relationships. Everything is through a screen or encloses us within a mobile bubble, for example texting, playing games, Facebook etc. During the project a prototype application was developed and user tested. The user testing showed that the app was usable and providing a new way to think about meeting up, but it was difficult to prove whether the app would be usable on a larger scale in the limited scope of the project.