Name:

That´s not really important, but it can be “predictive behaviour logics” or “Guess Action Algorithm”

Concept:

A big-ish widget on the screen of your smart phone (or computer, but I´ll think on mobiles for now) that shows what you most likely want to do, based on your patterns of use and other information like location, time, weather, agenda, emails, …

Need:

Think about it. Phones today can do millions of things. But when you take your phone, you are only interested in one, and many times is highly predictable, based on time and location. Most of these actions are not addressed by the notifications the phone already has, and we all end up with too many shortcuts in too many home screen.

-When you commute everyday on the metro, if you get your phone, you most likely want to open the News, the Kindle app, or the Angry Birds.

-When you wake up, if at all, you will want to see your email, Twitter or the weather.

-When you go to bed, you would want to check that the Alarm is on. And then turn the phone off.

-When you get off work, you´ll probably want to call your girlfriend, or your best friend.

-If you have had 3 missed calls from someone one day, there´s probably something going on, and you likely want call the person again. Or if he then sends an email, you should probably read it.

-If you start getting calls or emails from someone that is not on agenda you probably want to add it to your contacts.

-If you were doing something and someone calls, you probably want to go back to do that when you hang up.

-Every Saturday morning you go to the coffee place and you want to start the tether option to navigate with you laptop.

-You mute your phone at work when you arrive in the morning, and unmute when you leave. …

Convinced? I am. And the widget seems easy to implement.

Implementation:

-A background service Keeps track of which app is being used, time (and location?). After a week or so, it will start to see trends. There are already free apps that do this for calls, call duration and time of call, but none for apps.

-The button The button shows the most likely actions. You can decide the size of it to allow for the top first action or top two, three, automatic resize for highest scores…

Actions include: Call a particular person, open a particular app, open a new email to someone, change a setting, Turn-off.

Monetize:

Monetize this tools is not easy, so it could be released in demo version with a few weeks limit. Ads are not really applicable, as the only thing you see is the button. Putting random ads there seems too intrusive. However, if the most likely action is opening Angry Birds, then you can split the button in two and prompt for another game. If the action is Kindle app, another ebook.

Plattform:

I believe this kind of tools makes sense only in Android, as Apple doesn´t allow widgets on iPhones.

Open it up to computers is another option which brings many other possibilities.

Note:

This is just a simple idea I have that I thing could be interesting. I don´t have the time, or knowledge, or money, to implement it. May be someone else has. Posting them online is perfect way to share it with as many people as possible. I post them because I want them to be real.

I do have others, but I keep the best ones for me until I find how to get them going. Writing your ideas makes you think carefully about the problems but also helps define a more realistic concept. I believe this, in turn, improves your creativity. That has been my case since I started to write them down for myself. Now, some are public. Click on the “ideas” tag on this blog. Feel free to take them if you want, and If you want more, contact me.

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