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Idea

Contact lists that display the remaining times you will see each person in your life, to help you reevaluate priorities

Image credit: Dmitriy Kharaberyush

Darko Savic

Darko Savic Apr 10, 2022

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An add-on to contact lists that shows the approximate remaining number of times you will see each person in your lifetime. 
People's paths diverge. Friends grow apart. Eventually, we see some people at reunions, some at funerals, and some never again.
Why?
You don't know when you might be seeing someone for the last time, but you can estimate the number of times you have left. Would knowing the number make a difference?
Spend more time with people you love, sooner rather than later.
A reminder to focus on priorities in life.
How it works
A feature added to your contact lists (phonebook, social media, etc) where a counter icon is displayed next to the person's profile image.
Clicking on the counter icon takes you to the configuration menu where you can adjust the parameters to improve the accuracy of the estimate.
The top of the page explains what this number means and how it's calculated. Next to it, there is a message: "Don't like it? Call <name> today!"
The parameters by which the estimate is calculated are:
Your age, sex (if the app/platform doesn't already know it)
your medical issues
their age, sex (if not already known)
their known medical issues
How often you see each other
How could the accuracy be improved without adding a full medical questionaire for every person?
How can the app check whether the frequency of meetings with each person is still accurate without bugging you too often? Things change, people grow apart.

mobile application friendship family

2

Creative contributions

Some suggestions

Povilas S

Povilas S Apr 10, 2022

Great idea! I wouldn't suggest a function of the app encouraging you to contact those people whom you see rarely. I think it's better to simply show the number and leave the rest for the person's own consideration. 
Notifications encouraging you to do something about it would create a slight psychological pressure and motivate people by fear (of losing someone, not doing enough, etc.). Arguably, actions done out of fear don't lead to any good results, especially when it comes to relationships. Instead, I think it would be good to show reminder(s) that the estimate is approximate (which is true) and you shouldn't take it too seriously. This would bring more relaxation to the process.
The accuracy of the estimate can be improved by analyzing the quality of people's interactions (e.g. text messages) and seeing how much two people "vibe" with one another, where their relationship currently stands, and where it is moving (is it getting deeper, do they have fun together or are they growing apart, etc.). I think this is a very important factor for a better estimate of times they'll still meet in life. 
Another related factor is their characters, personality types, etc. A psychological compatibility estimate could be counted by the software. People who want to use the proposed function would be asked to fill an extensive personality test, for those pairs of people where both sides filled the test the software would show a more accurate estimate.

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Shubhankar Kulkarni

Shubhankar Kulkarni2 years ago

The Facebook check-ins and tags can help describe your relationships with other contacts in your phonebook. This coupled with the text messages (as you said) and phone call summaries (frequency and duration) could make a better estimate. The app could make some extrapolations based on the facts it has. For example, if your friend still lives in your hometown and you don't, and you visit your folks on holidays, that is when you can probably meet your friend, too. Depending upon how many holidays you have in a year when you visit your folks, the app knows that you will probably meet your friend twice a year. This coupled with your and your friend's life expectancy can give you a fair number. After all, these are extrapolations, but will be good to know how many times I may get to see the person.

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Darko Savic

Darko Savic2 years ago

Shubhankar Kulkarni Yes, that would work well. Grouping people by geolocation and relationships and considering the likelihood of meet-ups in batches 

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Using phone's location services

Spook Louw

Spook Louw Apr 11, 2022

Another way to get an estimate of how many times you will see a person is by building up a database of information on how often the individuals are near you. The phone would then be able to keep count of how often you see people, by matching their geolocation to yours and then finding an average over a certain stretch of time. 
For this to work, the other people would also have to grant the app permission to access their location, but it could also be more accurate than working with assumptions or estimations about people. This way, you would also be able to see who is disappearing from your life by having the app compare how often the two of you have met over, for instance, the previous six months and any earlier six month intervals since both of you started using the app. 
I think it would be better to base the information on the phone owners' habits, rather than trying to speculate how long they will live. 

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General comments

jnikola

jnikola2 years ago

I saw that Snapchat has these fire emojis that visualize your days-in-a-row streak of having a conversation with someone. If you skip one day, the count resets to zero. It's a cool way how to motivate, but actually the opposite of the proposed idea. On the other hand, Instagram has "the least contacted" followers section, which targets the same aspect of the problem as your idea. However, it's not direct enough as a measure of what you could lose if you don't contact that person. That's why your idea could work! My only doubts are in terms of how precise would the algorithm be.

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Darko Savic

Darko Savic2 years ago

J. Nikola it doesn't need to be extremely precise. Seeing AI calculate the probability of seeing a person in low digits of times makes anyone think.

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Goran Radanovic

Goran Radanovic2 years ago

Once the counter drops to single digits, would that not be motivation to see that person more than one usually would?

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Darko Savic

Darko Savic2 years ago

Goran Radanovic yes, I imagine it would. Which would subsequently increase the counter again

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Darko Savic

Darko Savic2 years ago

This idea was inspired by this tweet

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