A 21st Century Phonebook

With today’s globalized world, people are the most valuable and diverse information hubs. We each hold unique knowledge, experiences, and abilities that allow us to learn from each other in invaluable and transformative ways. We want to connect with people, but it’s often easier said than done for several reasons:

1. We’re bad at remembering details

This is perhaps best seen at a conference or networking event. With a large number of people at these gatherings actively trying to meet new people, we often find ourselves scrambling to remember the names of everyone we meet and the relevant details about themselves that they share with us.

Photo from the Tapia conference I attended last year

Our forgetful nature can either lead to slightly awkward and less meaningful future interactions or our reluctance to contact them.

2. Exchanging contact info can be a hassle

Wider range of social media platforms available than ever before ¹

After meeting someone, and you decide that you want to stay in contact, what information do you exchange? Phone numbers? LinkedIn? Email? Facebook? Snapchat? We now have a multitude of options but often find ourselves deciding on one because of the time and hassle of finding and giving usernames and opening up several social media apps.

Exchanging contact info should be less of a hassle ²

Exchanging contact info is even a bigger inconvenience when people form new groups (such as teams or a table of strangers at a conference) and need to exchange contacts with each group member.

3. Our contact information often changes with time

The current way we connect with people does not account for the fact that it’s normal for people to change their numbers and emails, and may become inactive on certain social media accounts. It’s therefore difficult to remain in contact with people without consistently reaching out or staying updated on their activity.

The solution

What we need is a comprehensive mobile application, let’s call it Deetz, that is linked to the user’s social media accounts, emails, and phone numbers. The app would be able to detect nearby Deetz users, enabling people to select who they want to connect with and send their contact info to the people they meet in one go. People would choose what contact info they want to share (eg. only certain social media accounts) with another user or multiple users, and simply clarify each other’s unique Deetz usernames, reducing the hassle. Users could update their contact info, for example if they changed their number or added a social media account, and it would automatically update for Deetz users they are connected to. This allows us to better stay in contact with people over time. Deetz would help us remember details about people we meet by associating names of users with brief tags that describe details about them, for example “works at Facebook”, “Patriots fan” or “met on the subway”. If we forget someone’s name, we can search for them by typing in keywords and the names with tags that best match them would be given. With this, if you want to connect with people, all you have to do is “send them your Deetz”.

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