iBeacons are a fun new area to explore and come up with original areas of use. In contrast to GPS, tagged iBeacon regions can be quite small, work indoors and – just to blow your mind – could also be attached to moving objects. But before opening up this completely new category of “location based” let’s step back and start where we spend most of our time. At home.

Places & Intends

A common approach to find meaningful use cases for iBeacons is to identify places that are inherently tied to specific contexts and intends. Breaking those down into common actions helps you to find related apps or opportunities for such – Apps that solve real problems or provide contextual information that is useful or fun. Also, the smaller the area of focus the easier it is to identify dedicated use cases.

As explained in more detail in our previous post Understanding iBeacons iOS apps can range iBeacons quite precisely. The tracking distance to act upon can be from 20m (line of sight) up to a few centimeters. This allows tagging whole rooms, work spaces and even tiny spots and specific objects.

At home rooms usually share sets of common activities. They are a a good starting point for identifying potential contexts and actions.

As you might realise for every single of those activities there are already numerous apps available. However very few of them are smart about their actual usage context. iBeacons have the potential to change this and this is where you can start connecting the dots.

Examples

You are standing in the kitchen in front the stove unlocking your iPhone. Only given your specific location it is very likely that you might want to use e.g. a timer app or a cooking app. If you think about other rooms and spots at home you’ll be surprised how many of them can be tied to specific apps similarly. Like …

So, does it really make that much of a difference?

Up until now you have to remember the right app at the right spot at the right time, turn on your iPhone, search for it and launch it. Using iBeacons for location tagging this process can be shortened in smarter ways for more efficiency and convenience. And, free goodie – iBeacon linked apps thereby have a good good chance for having an increased repeated use - popping up at the right place, just when you need it.

Big deal.