Would People Let You Take Their Picture for Your Address Book?

For the past few days, I’ve been trying out the LG KF750 Secret. As a full-featured cell phone, the Secret allows users to assign pictures to contacts in their address book—whether an customized avatar that’s similar to Yahoo’s, a pre-existing image, or a small image to be taken right there and then with the phone’s integrated camera.

The last option is particularly interesting to me, because I’ve never known of anyone who has made full use of it. That’s quite understandable, because it is a bit awkward asking a new contact “Hey, can I take a picture of you for my address book?”

An Experiment

In any case, that’s what I exactly plan to do. Every time I get someone’s number, I’ll ask them if I can take a photo for my contact list. I’ll be keeping track of my new contacts’ reactions, whether it be apathy, amusement, or simple regret that they decided to interact with me in the first place.

I’ll probably also have a hard time getting address book pictures from my existing contacts, for the same awkwardness mentioned above. Again, I will also keep track the reactions of my friends (or soon-to-be former friends).

Why do this in the first place? Well, I’m not really good with names to begin with; my current address book is half-full of forgotten contacts, because there are no visuals to link to the names and the numbers. Through this experiment, I hope to fully stock my address book with photos and never forget the name of someone ever again. At the same time, I’ll acquire a general idea of how open people are to having their picture taken for a phone’s address book. Stay tuned for my results!