This is the opening screen of the app. The name OpenSeatMap is a spin off of the software name OpenStreetMap that I used in my GIS class. The way I envision this screen working is that it would pop up when you open the app and show for one second and then transition to the main screen of the app.
The main screen for the app will be an interactive map of the UC Berkeley campus. On this screen, the app will automatically find the user's current location and show this with a star labelled "YOU ARE HERE". This feature will help to orient users allowing them to determine which library is the closest to them more rapidly. From this screen the user will be able to zoom in and out for better viewing. If the user double taps the portion of the screen that they are trying to zoom to, the next screen will appear.
After zooming on the previous screen, the user will arrive at a screen that looks very similar but shows a closer view of the map. The user will continue to navigate the zoom until they find the library that they are looking for and then the screen will look like the following screen.
Once the user has finished navigating through the zoom of the map and come across the library they are looking for, a red pin will appear over the library. The user will click on the pin in order to view how many seats are available at that library, which will appear on the next screen.
Once the screen shows how many seats are available in the library of the user's choosing, a button will appear at the bottom of the screen offering the user directions. If the user elects to use the directions they will press the button and the app will navigate the user to the next screen.
Directions will appear on this screen telling the user how to get from their current location to the library. After the user navigates to the library, the directions will shut off and the app will return to the main screen.
This is a screen recording of how a user would interact with the app. The app was designed using the POP app.
How I Got Here:
I began this process with my project group a couple of months ago. We decided that the bug in our life that we wanted to find a solution for was seating in public settings. We began by interviewing other students at Cal to determine how people felt about public seating on campus, around campus, or just in general.
A possible bias in our study is that all of the users that we interviewed were college-aged, Cal students. However, a study showed that millennials (college-aged people) had the highest percentages of library use, which made them our target audience. We conducted twelve interviews and were able to gather some common threads. We noticed that the most common use of public seating in all of our users was for studying, which entailed going either to a library or cafe. We also noticed that there were more complaints about the library in terms of possible issues it creates while studying, which makes sense because a library is supposed to be designed to cater to a study environment and cafes are not, which makes it understandable as to why the cafes did not receive as many complaints about the environment and set up.
Some of the common complaints about libraries included the access to outlets, the design of outlets, the design of tables, and the comfort of chairs. However, the biggest deterrent and nuisance for users was when they would go to the library and all of the seats were full, so they were unable to study in that location. Overall, one of the most common things that users said they would like is a way to know if there are seats available .
This led me to my solution of creating an app that would tell users how many seats are available in each library, so that they could make a decision about what library to go to before actually traveling there. In order for the app to work, there would need to be some sort of system in the library that would track how many people are going in and out. As for the app itself, I began with an idea of just listing the libraries and how many seats were there. Then, I though about making it into a map, so that users could actually see where the libraries were to make decisions based on what was near them. After showing low fidelity and mid fidelity versions of my project to different users, I decided to also incorporate directions into my project. So now when a user selects ta library, they can receive directions to the library from their current location.
