Stride Towards More Meaningful Connections with the Gait Project.
What is your favourite colour? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Where did you last go on holiday? Time and again, we find ourselves typing the same answers to the same old questions into yet another app that promises to connect us with our as-yet- undiscovered soulmate – only for said ‘soulmate’ to turn out to be the last person with whom we’d choose to be stranded on a desert island. Now, however, there is a new technology in town, one that promises to redefine the way we connect, both on- and offline. Step forward the Gait Project.
The Gait Project is an innovative app that harnesses existing smartphone technology to analyse human behaviour and identify real-life connections based on the results. As unique as a fingerprint or freckles, the way a person walks – their ‘gait’ – says more about them as an individual than a list of generic questions ever can. Our starting point, our destination, excitement, fear, fatigue; each of these has a bearing on our gait. Yet more often than not, we allow this information to fall by the wayside and with it, the potential to better understand ourselves and those around us.
The Gait Project, on the other hand, seeks to utilise this potential. Once downloaded and installed, the app analyses the user’s gait via sensors in their smartphone and pinpoints the three other users – in the world, the country and the city, respectively – whose gait best matches the user’s own. Users will then have the option to chat privately with their matches and, with any luck, go on to forge meaningful, lasting connections.
Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.