The Product
Our initial idea was for an app that allows people with similar interests to join a chat room and talk about those interests among other things. The point of having the rooms based on shared interests is to give people an ice breaker, something they all enjoy. The strengths of this are that it encourages people to engage each other on the train, while still being able to retain some anonymity if you want to drop out of the conversation. A weakness is that it requires WiFi or data, which may not be available when the train goes underground. However, this app is much more feasible to implement than some of our other ideas such as refurbishing an entire train with tables or desks and such. The growing popularity of smartphones means that many riders will have access to it.
The Context
We made this project as part of our "HCDE 318: Introduction to User-Centered Design" course at the University of Washington. All components of the project were done during the Spring of 2016.
Our inspiration for this project was to design something "related to public spaces in and around light rail stations." Throughout the quarter, we worked both as a team and individually both during and outside of class. Online collaboration tools included Slack, Google Documents, and Axure's Team Projects function. The creation of LINKCHAT was broken up into smaller deliverables due on a weekly basis. Here, you will find documentation of all artifacts made along the way.