Missionary Smart Phone/PDA Ideas
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:30 pm
Here's a list of 51 ideas off the top of my head in terms of how missionaries could benefit from using a wireless smart phone with PDA functionality, as opposed to a land line phone in their apartment. Of course most of these features would require some special software:
- Have GPS with a map so the missionaries have some clue where they are at any given time.
- It would be helpful if the ward mission leader could login to a website to see this map and actually be able to find where the Elders are too.
- Map should clearly indicate assigned area, unit, stake, and mission boundaries. If missionaries don't know where they are and don't know where the boundaries are, then we can't really expect them to stay within their assigned areas.
- From a web based applet, the mission should be able to "highlight" areas on the map in a different color and send text messages with remarks such as "I want you to focus on this neighborhood, or pay less attention to that neighborhood". Or, the ward mission leader could do the same thing to indicate a neighborhood that member-missionaries have worked through and what their efforts were.
- Smart phone should automatically synchronize itself over the air with the MLS records over the air so that ward members are in the missionary’s address book, and the map is marked with the location of each member's home.
- All referrals or investigators in the database would be sent over the air to the device and plotted on the map in a similar fashion. Icons could represent the type of referral or status of the investigator. For example, a Book of Mormon icon on the map would indicate a family that needs to be delivered a copy of the Book of Mormon. A “3” icon might represent someone who is being taught the 3rd discussion lesson.
- Tapping on any member or investigator marked on the map would bring up their contact sheet. Any phone numbers they have would be listed with a “call” button next to it. Tapping that would auto-dial their number.
- An optional ear piece would be available that the Elder’s could use while making several calls to setup appointments, so that they could hold the smart phone in their hands while they talk and browse through the various screens in the middle of a conversation. This way they can check their calendar and mark down new appointments while they are on the phone.
- Members could login to the Local Unit Website’s missionary section, and submit a form to invite the missionaries over for dinner. The form would have some calendar / date selection options to allow the member to specify multiple available days of the week or month, and the preferred times. Dates which the missionaries already have dinner appointments setup would be grayed out for those times of the day (but lunch for example might still be an option). A comments box would allow them to type a message to send to the missionaries. Just for kicks, they could select from one of various food icons (a slice of pizza, a fish, a hamburger, a turkey, etc.) that might jokingly correspond to their preferred dish or type of food. The missionary’s smart phone would beep and flash this icon on the map in place of the member’s normal icon. Tapping it brings up the message, and allows them to call the member back to confirm a specific appointment time. They could then mark this time down and it would update their calendar both on the smart phone and in a less detailed fashion on the LUWS dinner calendar.
- As any appointment approaches the number of hours / minutes left to get there will be displayed in small print below the appointment’s icon on the map. Shortly before the appointment it will begin to blink this icon, or optionally beep to remind the Elders of where they are expected to be.
- Elders could tap any location on the map and get the most efficient driving directions route calculated from their present location to that destination.
- All potential investigators could be flagged with the preferred times to come. Currently referral submission forms allow the contact to be noted if mornings, afternoons, or evenings are best. This information would be made known to the device.
- Each evening or morning Elders could review all their specific appointments setup for the coming day. An option would generate the most efficient driving directions map to get to each appointment in their proper sequence. Should there be any flexible appointments marked such as “come after 3 and before 8”, and there are appointments a few appoints spread during that time, the device would be smart enough to suggest a time that would fit in-between the other appointments based on their locations in such a way as to minimize travel distances. If need be the Elders could call that person to confirm they will be available at that time.
- When there are gaps in the schedule with no appointments, the device would highlight on the map the area along their driving route from one appointment to the next, displaying how much extra time they might expect to have before needing to get to the next stop.
- This map could plot out all potential referrals to follow up with in the neighborhoods in which they have extra time without going far out of their way. Icons could represent level of interest or nature of the potential follow-up contact. For example, those who were found through door knocking efforts and indicated a mild interest but were busy or didn’t want to be taught initially could be represented with an icon of a door. Those which were former media referrals might have a TV icon, etc. Tapping each of these brings up their referral history with all their calls to/from the MTC, previous visit attempts, and comments from each of the missionaries that have worked with them in the past.
- These icons could be color coded based on a ranking previous Elders specified as to the likelihood they might hope to make progress with the investigator. To help see where efforts might be most effective, Elders could filter the view to only plot addresses of contacts that are not older than a desired number of months, or excluding those that the previous missionaries felt would be unlikely to accept our message.
- The map background could be highlighted in different colors to represent the concentration of previous door knocking efforts in each neighborhood, kind of like a weather radar map. Elders could glance at it and know immediately which neighborhoods have not been adequately door-knocked in recent times.
- A slider could re-generate the color highlighting based on statistics from various different historical time periods. You could actually watch the map animated, transforming over a timeline providing a visual history of door knocking efforts concentrated in different neighborhoods. This allows you to see which neighborhoods may have been really covered well in previous years but have been neglected more recently, or vice versa. (It would of course take some time to build up a set of historical data for this purpose.)
- The Ward Mission Leader could promote member involvement in missionary work, and get members to announce a regular schedule of when they might be able to participate – such as Thursdays, the 2nd Saturday of the month, or whenever people are available. This information could be entered through a website, and the mission leader could see the location of where the member is that is available. If the member suggests participating when he gets off work, an alternate address of availability could be specified and seen on the map as well.
- After getting all of the member helpers with their regular schedules entered, and the offerings of dinner appointments into the system and plotted on the map, the mission leader could begin to see which areas would be best to concentrate on during any given day, so as to permit him to come up with a regular schedule for the Elders to aim for. For example, to try to cover an outlying village in the unit boundaries once a week on Tuesdays because Brother So-and-So is available those evenings in that area to assist or give the Elders a ride home.
- The mission leader could draw out on the map various “loop” regions based on the Loop Principle used by UPS for efficient package delivery routes, and adapt this to be used for suggesting preferred appointment times in any given area. What you do with this is select the main highway or most direct road to get to each community or population concentration within the boundaries. Then you look for terrain obstacles such as rivers or dead-end roads, or simply gravel back roads that are relatively midway off the beaten path between each of the main routes to opposing communities. These obstacles become the “boundaries” between one “loop” and the next. Each loop area could be assigned to be a preferred day of the week. The most distant location from the missionary’s apartment would default to mid-day, so you spend your mornings heading up one side of the loop to get to the community, and then work your way back to the apartment in the evenings along the other side of this looped region. The zones would be broken up into preferred time periods as to place the missionaries back in the vicinity of a member’s home around dinner time. The full time & ward / branch missionaries could see these zones and preferred time definitions to get an idea of the game plan of where the Elders will try to be on a regular schedule.
- When these loop zones and their preferred times & days are in the system, Elders setting up new appointments could simply select the location of an investigator, and then have the device pop up with a list of preferred appointment times to suggest, such as “How about Tuesday afternoon between 2 and 4?” If that doesn’t work for the investigator’s schedule, the missionaries could just go down the list of whatever times the device suggests so as to book all appointments with the minimum travel distances required that is fitting with the investigator’s schedule and members availability to assist.
- When speaking with investigators on the phone, the MTC Referral Center missionaries & volunteers could see these local zones highlighted on a map that pops up on their screen based on caller’s address. The Referral Center representative could invite the caller to be visited by the missionaries, with a more personalized line, such as “Actually we have some missionaries in your local area. It looks like Elder Smith & Elder Bronson have typically been getting to your neighborhood on Thursday evenings, and other parts of the week on occasion. Would you mind if they stop by and share a message about…?”
- At this point if an invitation to be visited is accepted, the MTC representative could keep the caller on the line making conversation while attempting to page the local missionaries. They could click a button from a computer at the MTC that would cause the local Elder’s smart phone to beep or vibrate and pop up with the new referral’s information that has been entered so far, while that referral is still on the phone with the MTC in a live call. The Elders could respond to the appointment request right there on the spot.
- If Elders are presently teaching someone when their phone beeps, one would continue teaching the local investigators while the other very briefly taps on the screen to respond to the request. He would simply tap “Yes” to denote they are busy teaching at that moment. The rest of the screen would then list suggested appointment times that are open on their calendar, ranked in order based on the new referral’s proximity to other appointments or location in respect to their master schedule. The Elder would simply check off which of the suggested appointment time periods are okay, and click close. This information would then pop up on the MTC representative’s screen who could ask the caller if the local missionaries could stop by on Tuesday between 4 and 6 PM, or whatever the Elders checked off from the list of available time slots. The caller could then say that 5:00 would be better, and the MTC representative would specify this in the computer and tell the caller that he/she will have Elder Bronson or Elder Smith give them a call to confirm the time.