Traces, an app created by UCL neuroscientist Beau Lotto, helps users bridge the disconnect between their real and digital worlds, in order to tackle anxiety caused by our online lives. Traces is a part messenger, part surprise-gifting service that lets users leave digital messages at physical locations for their friends to pick up with their smartphones when they are at those locations.
It's not just messages that senders can leave as traces, though. The sender can construct a digital gift using any combination of text, images, video, tickets and vouchers. To deliver the trace, the sender will then select the intended recipient from their contact list and then specify where they want it to be visible and for how long.
Accessing the specially placed digital gift is a very simple process -- requiring just a little effort to get to a specified GPS location at the right time -- and supposedly resulting in far more happy feels than one would normally experience in the context of receiving a message. When you are at the right spot, you raise your phone in search of a floating bubble. It is as if the messages have been etched on the air and when you align your phone with the target and burst the bubble, the secret reveals itself.
Lotto points out that all messaging that we do is contextually dependent and that the information received through a message can change in terms of its significance depending on where we are when we receive it. "The difference with Traces is that we recognise the importance of location to meaning and build it into the messaging experience at a fundamental level," he tells Wired.co.uk.
He believes the app brings new meaning to messaging thanks to the creativity of the sender and the trust of the user, as well as the effort they both go to in sending and receiving the message. Overall the receiver's engagement with the surrounding environment should be enhanced thanks to the method of delivery.
"We use a layer of augmented reality to visualise the trace -- this is because it enables the brain to embody the world around it (the message appears to be floating 'out there') -- as opposed to other conventional messaging apps which cause the brain to inhabit the phone, to the exclusion of a sense of location," he says.
As a result of this, recipients supposedly tend to see the message as more precious, which Lotto says is a known in neuroscience. "If we put effort into something, we tend to see it as being more valuable. Especially if it is not common or ubiquitous."
Traces differs from other social messaging apps in that it emphasises both "the shared commitment of both people involved" and "the gifting side of sharing", he adds. It inverts the self-promotional element of social sharing -- what Lotto refers to as "the peacock effect" -- and instead allows users to be creative, but in an altruistic and thoughtful way.
Indeed the onus is completely on the sender to be as creative as possible, both when choosing the content and the location of the trace. Lotto designed the UI and IX of the app to be simple and unbranded in order that the focus was on the beauty of discovering the bubble in the physical world.
The response to Trace has been overwhelmingly positive according to Lotto's research -- he is a neuroscientist after all -- with 4.2 out of every 5 users rating the experience as "satisfying" to "very satisfying". Almost everyone wanted to use the app again, primarily for giving gifts to others. If you want to try it out for yourself and find out whether you agree, Traces is available for free on the App Store in the UK now. An Android launch and global rollout is set to follow.
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