Inspiration
“There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely, though. Yesterday at his daily briefing, Ministry of Health hero Ashley Bloomfield pointedly swapped his language around distancing. Instead of “social distancing” he called it “physical distancing”, emphasising the importance of social interaction to people’s mental health and well-being.”
Direct Message was built out of a need to make meaningful digital technology that promotes and aligns with our core human values. Mobile devices and their designed utilities have drastically influenced the way we interact with each other socially. While they have the ability to connect us on a global scale, they are also able to disconnect us from the here and now. Direct Message exists as an alternative platform that allows you to interact within a digital space without disconnecting you from your physical environment.
We are a small team of Creative Technologies graduates who built Direct Message in our final semester of our Bachelor’s degree at the Auckland University of Technology in 2019. Initially it was designed to act as a social commentary on the relationship between human and device. Focusing on the role devices and their designed utility play in how we interact with each other, and the difficulties we face in living in both physical and digital domains. However, in the current world climate, we believe it is a useful web app to connect people who are physically distancing in isolation and aid them in forming a much needed physical connection to their friends and family. While our initial intention was to highlight the physical disconnect our devices invoke in our relationships with other people. Now that we are all confined to isolate within the boundaries of our homes, our devices have become our only means of social interaction. Direct Message acts as a method of breaking down the physical disconnect we are all experiencing.
What it does
Direct Message facilitates conversation like any other messaging application, however it adds the element of physical connection by requiring the users to literally turn and face who they are wanting to talk to. Users are also required to gesture with their hands in order to communicate, as they would if they were speaking face to face.
This works over any distance, be it in the same building or across the globe. As the digital interaction now involves a physical gestural element that extends past purely typing on a keyboard. The physical connection formed by knowing the users are both directly facing each other, no matter their location, is one that is unique and different to other means of digital communication including video calls.
How we built it
We began Direct Message with an idea for bridging the gap that exists between physical and digital communication. We wanted to find a novel use of existing technologies that allowed people a new experience when using their devices to talk to people.
Our iteration process looked at technologies such as GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometers, and compasses; all available on most modern mobile devices. We settled on using both accelerometer readings and onboard compasses, depending on the device and what technology it supports and exposes to web apps. On iOS devices we can access absolute direction readings from the compass, however Android devices must be calibrated by pointing north, and then using relative accelerometer readings to determine direction.
We decided our final product should exist as a Progressive Web App, a widely accessible hybrid of a native and web app. It allows users to either use Direct Message from an icon on their phone’s home screen, or as a web app in their browser. This provides greater choice and flexibility to our users.
A NodeJS server provides the backend of our app, and allows for asynchronous handling of requests. This, in theory, will allow the server to handle larger traffic loads. To communicate with the client, we use Socket.io, a websocket library that allows instant updates when a new message is sent. The client site itself is pure javascript and HTML, reducing load times and data costs that can happen with some layout frameworks.
What’s next for Direct Message
Direct Message is currently at a proof of concept stage, but we want to continue developing the idea. Our next goal is to add further usability to the app, allowing people to choose which channels they communicate on. This will mean adding the options to talk to those geographically near to you or create invite only rooms with friends. This will expand the use cases for Direct Message and encourage more communication through our app.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.