Aaron Guhin

In 2 weeks, we needed to design a mobile phone app that empowers a specific audience to help improve part of the chain of food collection and distribution.

Community fridges are subject to health and fire codes, inconsistent inventory information, and insufficient maintenance. Cities are requiring fridge donors to place locks on the fridges which defeats the purpose of them by reducing ease of access.

Through brainstorming, secondary research and competitive analysis, we found there were many food insecurity apps that connect organizations to different parts of the supply chain. We needed something very unique.

We wanted to create an app that makes these fridges more reliable for all members of this grassroots community system by organizing the functions of donees, donors, and volunteers into one place.

Working with our industry partner Activision, we first answered their question, How can the Call of Duty (CoD) companion app create social features to keep players engaged with the game and each other? After coming up with individual concepts, me and some other students took it bit further by asking, How might we give players a welcoming experience using the companion app and help introduce them to the many different aspects of the game, all while building a community around said experience?

Players, particularly new players, can have trouble navigating such a dynamic game like Call of Duty. This type of obstacle has shown to discourage players from continued gameplay and enjoyment.

All players we interviewed value social interactions while playing. Scheduling and communication are important but currently done in 3rd party apps. Also, Women are invisible until they are in supportive communities. Once in controlled environments, players enjoy themselves more and blossom.

Spec Ops, or Special Operations, are missions, with a set of objectives, for players to complete within a week in order to get achievement badges, in- game rewards, or XP. Players can complete these by themselves, but this feature encourages them to play with others, whether to get an XP multiplier or cooperative-dependent badges.

For this project, we wanted to answer this question, ""How might we create an interactive system that solves transportation and mobility issues within a city center?"" So, my group and I took a trip to Westfield Century City and observed some of the way-finding issues that those with and without visual impairments may face when visiting.

Westfield Century City Mall is very large and has gone through a billion dollar renovation, but way-finding here is difficult for everyone. The signs are small and scarce, the digital directory is confusing and doesn’t provide turn-by-turn guidance, nor is it inclusive for the visually impaired. There was a feature for visitors in wheel chairs but it just moves the screen down to be more accessible.

This project really displayed how underserved our visually impaired community is and how exclusive public spaces can be. Although there are a lot of people out there trying to tackle this issue, there is certainly some missed opportunities.

Our solution was to create a handsfree, yet interactive, way-finding experience for the visually impaired. From our research, we figured out some ideas on how someone with visual impairment could be assisted, such as an A.I. chatbot, hyperlocal geolocation, and environment descriptions. This would be done simply by using the existing Westfield mall app and headphones for the visitor.