The service sector makes up nearly 70% of the U.S. economy, yet customers are often frustrated by their service experiences and companies don’t always recognize the role design can play in crafting their service offering. How does one design something as intangible as a service? Our team chose to work within the tourism & hospitality industry, applying the principles of openness, transparency, reliability and community to our service.

Our service became known as Streamline, a company that empowers locals to rent their idle goods to tourists who want to travel lightly. It seeks to connect travelers’ destination needs to shared resources in a local community. By helping locals capitalize on their underused goods (and save space in their home too), Streamline creates opportunity by providing luggage-free travel as well as offering an alternative to existing storage options.

Streamline allows locals to post, promote, and lend their idle goods. They are inventivized to participate because they can store their unused items for a reasonable one-time fee, and make money at the same time. Tourists, on the other hand, can avoid the hassle of traveling with large, bulky items by renting through Streamline. By selecting from a variety of goods located right at their travel destination, tourists can have items delivered right to their place of stay for use during their vacation. When returning for home, they can simply leave behind the places they rented instead of packing them up.

Our Prototyping User Experiences class was divided into three sections: storytelling, prototyping techniques, and sketching in hardware. For the first six weeks of the semester, we were assigned teams and had to choose a transportation issue in New York City. My team selected the ominous Port Authority Bus Terminal on 8th and 42nd. In order to identify pain points in the traveler experience, we observed and documented facility layout, information and interaction touchpoints, and user behavior on-site. We synthesized our findings into a user journey map and developed an initial solution: reusable, e-ink tickets that acted as both navigation aids and bus ticket for the passenger.

After a few rounds of paper prototyping and class feedback, we abandoned the e-ink ticket for a larger solution that integrated all bus companies into one ticketing system - instating user accounts, mobile and online access, and redesigned kisoks at the bus terminal. Having recently learned video and user journey techniques, we created several iterations of a user journey video to present our concept to the class. Once we began the prototyping phase of the class, we split from our groups to focus on different types of prototyping and user testing techniques. I chose to use Flash to develop a bouncing ball demo of the interface as well as a foamcore kiosk and the usability application Silverback for user testing.

For the final phase of the class, we could continue to prototype solutions for our selected topic or take our hardware sketches in a different direction. After trying out various sensors, I really enjoyed playing with RFID and developed an RFID jukebox that allowed users to create a playlist from physical representations of songs.

This 3-week midterm project asked us to create a potential entry for the New York City's Big Apps competition, utilizing data from the city's DataMine platform. I noticed that many entrants created apps that sorted and filtered the deluge of events and entertainment options in New York, but very few of the apps had emotional resonance. I wanted to use data to augment the experience of exploring New York and focused on the overlooked roadside memorials of ghost bikes.

While ghost bikes are intended to preserve the memory of killed cyclists and create awareness for bike safety, their permanence is jeopardized as time passes. The Ghost Bike iPhone app serves as a resource to memorialize NYC cyclists and document ghost bikes beyond their physical installation, allowing users to locate ghost bikes, read cyclist stories, and place virtual mementos such as letters, flowers, or candles. When visiting a ghost bike, the user is able to see other visitor’s mementos through an augmented reality view. In the unfortunate event that a ghost bike has been vandalized or removed, the user would still be able to see the bike as it once was.

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