Critical Analysis #2 - Embodied Interventions

Waiting at La Prima is an excrutiating experience. Any student could tell you this. As the best coffee place on campus, La Prima needs a system that is less aggravating and keeps not only students, but non-student consumers as well. We propose and app and Bluetooth interface that queues and charges consumers orders in a more efficient and less space intrusive technique.

Our intended goal is to keep people from jaywalking, and as a result, promote safety in congested intersections. The crosswalk on Forbes Avenue is a perfect example of a place to watch pedestrian behavior. When people intend to cross the street, they’re checking for three factors to allow them to do so - a red traffic light, the crosswalk sound, and the stop hand on the crosswalk sign. Currently, there is a prevalent gap in time between the sound cutoff, when the stop hand on the traffic light turns solid, and when the traffic light turns green.If we were to make the stop hand and crosswalk sound cohesive, this would allow people a better understanding of when to cross the street, and when to not do so. Our plan is to not only change how the crosswalk signal sounds, but to also change how the stop hand reacts to the crosswalk signal. We believe that if we were to replace the beep-boop sound with notes that speed up to let the pedestrians know when the crossing time is running out, their behavior would change. People generally conform to the beat of music, so if the notes on the crosswalk speed up to indicate that they’re running out of time, a pedestrian would understand whether they should cross quickly or wait until the next light. One major example of this is the classic tune on Jeopardy which signals the elapsing of a contestant's time. Similarly, if we were to replace the stop hand with-- or add to it-- a countdown clock that is synced with the notes, this would prevent several people from jaywalking, thus increasing their chances of crossing the street safely.

Upon observation of a very busy central crosswalk, we noticed that too many people jaywalk in potentially dangerous situations. We would like to draw attention to their actions, because they often cross the street without paying attention to their surrounding and what their feet are actually doing. The way we will address this is by placing motion and weight sensors in the crosswalk that will sense the weight distribution of a person walking against the traffic (as opposed to the weight distribution of a car). If a person jaywalks, a loud beeping noise from the ground and a small vibration from under their footsteps will draw their attention to their feet and make them rethink jaywalking and keep them safe (compare this to a similar situation that we often find ourselves in - when you are in a car and have yet to buckle your seatbelt, a loud and obnoxious beeping noise will remind you to do so, and will not stop until you buckle your seatbelt).

For many incoming students and visitors to CMU, it can be tough navigating their way to specific buildings on campus. The Mellon Institute might even be closer to Pitt. than CMU! There are also other aspects of CMU life that it would take a while for them to get used to. They might not know where and when the CMU shuttles pick up and drop off people. The buses down Forbes can be hard to catch due to their erratic schedule. They might not know all the dining places on campus, nor would they know which are the most busy and at which times. Also, there are many activities going on around CMU, hosted by various organizations but all of them are publicized in different manners, making it hard for students to keep track of all of them. What we want to do is design an interactive map kiosks, like the kind we see in some airports (See cover picture), that makes all this information available to users. Look at the additional documentation for detailed features of the interface.

La Prima is a popular coffee shop in Wean Hall that often gets overwhelmed by orders during certain peak times. This is a huge challenge because the line for this coffee shop extends through the atrium of Wean, which is a very high traffic area. This causes chaos and confusion as employees with clipboards walk down the line taking orders and students push through and around to get to class.

Our goal is to increase consumer awareness and streamline the ordering process at The Exchange. Currently, there are a few issues that we have identified: - The menu is obscured, and many people in the queue can not see it. - There is a single line feeding into 3 separate lines for ordering different types of food, and the distinction between the three is unclear.

Inside the UC, it is always packed with people looking for a place to sit, especially during the lunch hours when people are trying to find a place to eat. We would like to make it simpler to find a place to sit during these times without the hassle of running around back and forth looking for an empty table. Our idea was to implement small, non-disruptive, green lights above each table to indicated whether or not someone is there. If the table is occupied, motion and weight sensors will pick up on this and change the light to red. Otherwise, the light remains green, so people can know where there's someone there.

This week, we observed the crowd and the lines at the Exchange, a local sandwich and hot food shop. To improve efficiency and reduce confusion, we propose the addition of LED floor guides to separate the lines between the two stations (sandwiches and hot food).