Miguel Angel Lucas

Hey Metro! provides an automated voice kiosk that communicates with the major ridership population in their language. In addition to augmenting the services offered to riders.

Union station is a highly trafficked transport hub. Commuters feel unsafe using the service or touching surfaces. Due to social distancing they also miss the human interaction element, and lastly language barriers became apparent for metro's key riders, the latino population in Los Angeles, to adapt to the new Covid19 protocols

We explored existing commuter touch points, and found they were segmented across different platforms. A mobile app, in person kiosks, Website, 3rd party apps and onsite wayfinding solutions. Separate systems with specific flows of information we wondered if we can demonstrate a single access point that can provide commuters with their needs and reduce their gaps in knowledge.

Our Solution is Hey Metro a voice kiosk activated with the following phrases: Hola Metro! Hey Metro! Spatial Microphones with noise cancellation would receive the commuters voice. Once activated the screen provides captions, and a speaker provides audio feedback in the riders language. We envisioned Hey Metro to replace existing kiosks.

ARt pARk is an augmented reality art gallery designed for Grand Park to foster community and engage park visitors with a novel experience. 2 phase project beginning with Create & Night at Grand Park followed by ARt in the pARk. Focused on creating an augmented reality in a public park space.

How can we enhance the guest experience to encourage visitors to co-create the story of Grand Park so that they can have a slice of the park wherever they go? We found the cost of integrating art installations at Grand Park is high.In addition the park is missing key activation features during the day for park visitors outside of their special events.

Public spaces are catalyst for community creation. (1) Engaging personal networks to market their artistic experience. (2) Creatives can utilize a public hybrid art sharing platform. (3) Visitors will engage the park regardless, we can augment their ongoing interactions. At night the park is mostly empty with the exception of a few late night visitors or unhoused individuals. The same is true during off days from events. During the day the Park itself serves as space for local workers or events. Artists are interested in the opportunity to share their work in a public setting so long as they can receive recognition or compensation for their contributions.

We envisioned a digital platform for artists to upload artwork, and augmented reality anchors located at the park for visitors to experience with their mobile devices. Onboarding posters for generating initial interest while onsite team members explained the concept further. An augmented reality gallery prototype created with Hoverlay. Park visitors would need to download an existing application in order to engage with the augmented reality gallery.

Nootro is smart ring concept & mobile app, it helps remote workers manage stress levels. Fully conceptual product based on real technologies. We engaged in speculative fiction to envision a better working space even for remote workers. We mapped out our existing assumptions based around burnout and ways to solve it.

We discovered knowledge based workers are facing large amounts of mental strain that can potentially lead to employee burnout. Our project brief was to re envision the collaboration process in the digital age. As a team we looked at the challenges knowledge workers faced when engaging work in a fully remote environment. We based this project on our own experiences

We observed our on behaviors related to burnout as students over the course of one week . Each of us compiled a burnout journal that we shared with each other. At the end of the week the team documented their findings and mapped out solution ideas.

We explored different wearable technology and learned about the physical constraints.‍ We had to pivot our idea from an earpiece monitor and opted for designing a smart ring that would have a fidget spinners component. With this in mind we began to create crude physical prototypes to realize the ring in our physical spaces. The end result was the Nootro concept that provides users a joint experience, the physical ring, and a companion mobile app generates insights for stress management.