Consent surface
When the OS prompt appeared, what the user chose, whether precise location is on, and whether background updates are alive. Without this, every downstream metric is conditional on an invisible filter.
Location intelligence
Intelligence is a claim. Make it small enough to defend.
This page is our working definition of location intelligence for consumer and marketplace apps — not a vendor catalogue. If you want the classroom version, it lives in District Signal Studio.
What we mean by the phrase
Location intelligence, in our room, is the practice of turning movement traces into product decisions without laundering uncertainty. It sits beside Location-Based App Analytics: analytics counts; intelligence chooses what those counts are allowed to mean.
A heatmap of “engagement” over a district is rarely intelligence. A rule that says “do not retarget inside a hospital geofence, and here is how we detect the fence” is.
Four working surfaces
Geometry surface
Fences, corridors, and indoor zones with explicit priority when they overlap. Bangkok malls and BTS halls are the stress test we use in class.
Time surface
Dwell, revisit, and attribution windows that admit gaps. Sparse GPS is modelled, not deleted. A visit with a six-minute hole is labelled as such.
The fourth surface is narrative: who is allowed to quote a location metric in a meeting, and with which caveat. That is why our residencies include a written attribution memo, not only a dashboard.
Where teams usually over-claim
Intent from dwell. Identity from a shared device. “Always on” coverage from a permission that iOS quietly degraded. Indoor conversion from a polygon that includes the food court. We keep a running list of these over-claims in the Journal; the dwell essay and the overlap essay are the two most requested.
If you want to practise, not just read
The Map Room Cohort walks these surfaces with your own examples. Shorter paths exist in the course list. If your question is specific to one product line, write to the desk and ask about a Peninsula Residency.