Friend Compass, or Localizador de Amigos in Portuguese, helps you to meet new people interested in the same things you are. It tracks your location and shows a list of tags you can use to filter people nearby.

This project was part of the Multimídia II class, during my Industrial Design undergraduate course and it’s worth noting that this project dates back from the year 2008.

At the time almost no one had a smartphone. In fact, I’d seen an iPhone in person once. The main resource available was screenshots found on the internet, basically. This was even before Google debuted its Latitude app. Nonetheless, geolocation apps were a thing and something I was interested about.

So in the summer of 2009 I spoke at Campus Party Brasil’s CP Labs panel to a group of curious and investors about the app with some interesting reactions about user privacy and creating the business. It was a very nice experience indeed.

Video of one of the usability test sessions, in Portuguese.