Proximity Notification System for Photo Collection Gaps
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users often have few or no photos with close friends due to differing habits in taking pictures, leading to regrettable gaps in their photo collections over time.
Innovation Solution
A proximity-based notification system that uses location information and social graph data to alert users when a member of their social graph is nearby, encouraging them to take photos together by calculating the number of shared photos and suggesting photography opportunities based on proximity and photo dates.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If users rely on spontaneous photo-taking habits, then individual photo collection diversity is maintained, but photo coverage with close friends deteriorates due to differing habits
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors location data, social graph relationships, and photo collection status to generate real-time notifications. When a user is near a friend with whom they have few photos, the system provides feedback through push notifications, creating awareness and prompting action to take photos together, thereby improving photo collection completeness without requiring manual tracking
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically performs location tracking, photo database querying, and notification generation without user intervention. The mobile device's GPS and the server's photo database are leveraged to self-determine when photo opportunities arise, eliminating the need for users to manually track their photo collections or remember to take photos with specific friends
2Loss of information
If users manually track photo collections with each friend, then photo collection awareness is improved, but system complexity and user burden increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system leverages existing multi-functional components: the mobile device's GPS is used for both navigation and photo opportunity detection, the social graph database serves both connection management and photo recommendation purposes, and the photo database is queried for both user profiles and photo collection analysis. This universal use of existing infrastructure eliminates the need for separate tracking systems
Solution Approach 2:
The server acts as an intermediary that consolidates complex operations. Instead of requiring the user's device to manually track photos with each friend, the server receives location data, queries the photo database, analyzes the social graph, and generates notifications. This intermediary approach centralizes complexity on the server side while keeping the user's device simple
3Productivity
If the system continuously monitors location and generates notifications, then photo opportunities are captured in real-time, but energy consumption and processing load increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of continuous monitoring, the system uses periodic location updates from the mobile device's GPS, which naturally updates at intervals. The server processes these periodic location reports and generates notifications only when photo opportunities are detected, rather than continuously querying and analyzing data. This periodic approach maintains detection capability while reducing energy consumption and processing load
Solution Approach 2:
The system pre-loads and caches photo database information and social graph data on the server before they are needed. When a location update is received, the server can quickly query pre-prepared data structures rather than performing complex database operations in real-time. This preliminary preparation reduces processing load during actual photo opportunity detection
Data Source
AI summary
Various aspects of the subject technology relate to systems, methods, and machine-readable media for a proximity-based notification. A system may be configured to receive user location information for a user and member location information for a member of a social graph belonging to the user, determining, based on the user location information and the member location information, that the member is located within a threshold distance of the user, and generating a notification to the user based on photographs that include both the user and the member.