17 Oct Aviate Simplifies Your Android’s Home Screen, Brings You The Information You Need Most
A new mobile app called Aviate hopes to save you from having to scroll through pages and pages of apps to find what you need when you need it, by turning your Android device into a smarter smartphone.
Aviate modifies your home screen to simplify the experience, by overlaying a pared-down version of the Android home screen. This modified home screen displays a few of the apps your use most frequently, while intelligently organising your other apps into different categories, making it easier to access the apps you need without needing to dive into the mess that is the applications list. If this wasn’t enough, the app also makes your device context aware, by surfacing the apps and actions you need in a specific moment, when you are engaging in a specific activity.
To determine the context of the user and what to display, Aviate draws upon a wide variety of information including the time of day and your location to determine what you are most likely doing at that point in time.
Once the app gathers this information, it then surfaces the relevant apps, buttons and links for that moment. So, the apps and actions you will see as soon as you turn on your phone will vary from where you are or what you are doing. For example, if you’re driving, the app will bring up apps such as Google Maps, as well as automated buttons for getting the weather or directions home. Or if you’re at home at night, Aviate will bring up the weather forecast for the next day, as well as any appointments you have scheduled.
In terms of organising your apps, the app checks to see which apps you use the most, and then places them on your home screen. Your apps are then intelligently organised into different scenarios like Home and Work, which are dubbed as “Spaces”.
As you go about your daily activities, Aviate will display the Space it assumes you are in based on the location and time of day, displaying the Space in a bar found on top of your home screen. This bar will also include information such as surrounding bars and restaurants. To access that Space, you simply swipe down, while swiping to the left automatically brings up sorted Collections of apps such as news, weather and work. You can still access a list of all of your apps by swiping right.
While Aviate tries to automate the whole organisation process for you, you can also manually select up to 10 apps to stick to the bottom of your home screen, so the apps you absolutely need are always handy despite your context.
While this may sound very similar to Google Now, the difference is that Aviate does not require any user action. The information will be available automatically as soon as you turn on or unlock the phone. The founders also had to rethink how to deliver this contextual information to users, deciding that the this information “needs to live and breathe within the context of your phone- within the context of the experience where you can access all of your content”, instead of mere push notifications.
According to Montoy-Wilson, we should see Aviate evolve from a relatively static experience into a high personalised one, by bringing different apps and functions to different users even if they are in similar places (i.e. home or work). Additionally, instead of simply recommending apps based on what’s popular among the users of Aviate, the app could instead use other sources of user information to personalise the recommendations.
Aviate is currently in private beta, with 70,000 users having registered to test the app. You can sign up for the waiting list on Google Play here.
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