LetsGo: The app for getting together, better
**Editor's note: Michael Gillett, interviewed in this article, has helped us with website maintenance in the past**Even after deciding the time and place of a meet-up with friends, getting the hangout to happen can be complicated. While interning in San Francisco over the summer of 2017, co-founders Matt Cooper '18 and Michael Gillett '18 recognized that their social events were getting bogged down in the logistics. During a Lyft ride to a dinner with friends, Cooper recalls "messaging in 5 different group chats; people were late, people were bailing, and [he] was trying to figure out where everyone was. It was just super, super stressful." The two quickly realized that getting everyone together in an orderly and timely manner was the biggest obstacle to enjoying time with friends. With their computer science backgrounds, a better way was within reach. They wrote the prototype of the app in about two weeks over the summer and, upon testing it out with friends, the reception was immediately positive.
Matt Cooper '18 (left) and Michael Gillett '18 (right)
The core idea behind LetsGo is that social meet-ups are easier to manage when everyone involved can easily see where everyone else is on a map. This can already be done on iOS with Find My Friends, but the long-term nature of the location-sharing is unnecessary for brief hangouts, and it can feel uncomfortable to give someone your location for 24 full hours if you don't know them well.
LetsGo uses a simple interface that connects directly with Facebook. You can make a plan with a time and location, and then invite everyone involved. Then, as each person departs for the social gathering, they just tap the "LetsGo" button on the app, and temporary location-sharing is activated on the interactive map for every invitee to see. The app features mechanisms to edit the event details, invite other people, and chat with those invited. Once a person arrives, their location-sharing is terminated and everyone else is notified that they've made it to the destination. Matt, Michael, and Blog actually used the app to organize this interview.
Cooper and Gillett explained that Brown helped the development of their app by both providing a community to easily find groups of friends willing to test the app, and by giving them the opportunity to work on the app in their CSci Startup course (CSCI 1900, available in the spring semester).The LetsGo app publicly launched on the week of February 19th, following 7 months of continuous development and testing. Cooper and Gillett have considered adding a function for publicizing larger, more public events (like Gala or a senior night). With these events, individual friend groups could construct smaller, personal sub-events within. This would enable the event organizers to estimate attendance without sacrificing the privacy given by the app's small-group location-sharing focus. However, the two emphasized that their current goal is to build the user base and get as much feedback as possible.The ultimate purpose of the app is best summed up by Gillett: "We just want this to be a clean, streamlined process for getting people together and getting to the event, and then everyone can put their phones away and do what they came there to do."The LetsGo app is available for free on iOS and Android at www.letsgo.baby
Images via LetsGo, Lael Costa '18, and Kelly Carey-Ewend '19