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Tripto: Physical Space as a point function

Tripto represents its users’ physical location as a set of geographical co-ordinates and thereby represent them as a point in space. The virtual space of Tripto is a collection of points, its users, in various physical locations. When a set or more of the points share some mutual interest(s), they are activated to make a connection. Since a point has no physical length the physical spatiality here become zero-dimensional.

Happn: Physical Space as a linear function

The addition of representing chance encounters to make a suggestion for enabling social connections necessitates Happn to represent physical space as a linear function in its virtual world. In-order to determine whether its users have crossed their paths, the app has to rely on GPS data from their mobile devices to plot a route of their users and find a crossing point (the crossing point represents physical space as a point function / location co-ordinates). Since lines are collections of points, the representation of physical space become one-dimensional.

Tinder: Physical Space as a bi-axial function

Tinder is a general-purpose dating app, unlike Tripto, with an non-specific, wide target user group, that allows its users to chose their own filters like age, sex or distance as a search restriction. It also does not necessitate active physical activity, as in the case of Happn, as a restrictive parameter in search. However, Tinder’s algorithm places search results as point entities in a restricted radial surface with its active user assumed to be its centre, thus making its representation of physical space two-dimensional. Other users matching the search criteria become point function in this radial plane.

Digital Spatiality

Analysis / 2020.06.22

Integrating Physical and Virtual Realms.

In the 90s, the digital revolution has created a realm of virtual space. Many digital applications including productivity and office tools, web browsers and streaming services and, especially, games and messaging services created a separate virtual world that have practically no direct interaction with the physical space. These tools, which started its development before the popularisation of widespread wireless internet connectivity and GPS, created a closed digital world where its user(s) can interact virtually between themselves and the machine.

However, the spread of smartphones enabled with wireless internet and the subsequent boom in digital social media services have created a whole new hybrid space characterised by constant interaction between the digital and the physical spaces. Social medial applications and GPS mapping services have come up with various ways to represent the physical world in the virtual realm to suit the nature of services they provide to their users. Location and navigation apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps, Here, Waze, etc. have conventionally relied on representing the physical world as a two-dimensional (bi-axial) space in their app interfaces. Their recent attempt to include the representation of the third dimension into their apps is still in its early phases of development. Users and businesses have still not found a strong use case for 3D navigation and mapping services, except in very specialised sectors like geo-spatial planning and design.

Ride hailing applications like Uber and Lyft and food delivery applications like Zomato and Uber Eats have potentially made use of the two-dimensional spatial representation matrix to interact with the physical world. Many other social media apps like Facebook and Instagram often relies on a limited non (zero)-dimensional approach in representing physical space within their user environments. They usually allow to tag a location to a post (physical space as point functions) but rarely allows linear or uni (one)-dimensional and planar or two-dimensional representation of physical space. Facebook had briefly used a location based mapping system to find social media ‘friends’ in nearby areas which applied a map based two-dimensional representation system to integrate the physical space to the app but haven't been able to find a strong use case since its introduction.

The three applications analysed here are dating apps that use physical spatiality in three different ways in their virtual environments. The basic function of the apps remains to enable connecting people, often strangers, virtually to form a social network. While Tinder acts as a general dating app Happn tends to make use of chance encounters / surprise factor in trying to make social connections. Tripto is a specialised app for finding travel partners with similar interests to share a trip with.

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