Two designers are looking to the public to help develop a new mobile app for navigating public transit in Chicago. Sara and George Aye—the wife/husband team behind the social design firm Greater Good Studio—are interested in crowdfunding and crowd-designing an app that provides more than just the basic information of train schedules and bus routes to make riding public-transportation more accessible and user-friendly. So they’ve taken their idea to Kickstarter to raise funds and attract a crowd of like-minded Chicagoans who want to transform the everyday commute and make taking public transit just a little easier. The duo sees the Chicago community as their richest resource since it’s the public who can identify their own wants and needs and design an app that answers their most pressing transit issues. “There’s bound to be some amazing ideas that Sara and I could never come up with,” George explains. “We see the city as an amazing resource for solutions as much as it is for identifying problems” (quoted in GOOD).
Sara and George have already come up with some ideas for the app. They envision it boasting features such as an alarm to wake you up before your stop, weather alerts and reminders so you grab an umbrella before your trip, calendar sync to tell you when to leave for an appointment or meeting, alerts for nearby coffee shops, and information ranging from whether there are seats available on the bus to how much money you save on gas.
If you’re interested in participating in the design and development of “the mother of all transit apps,” a $25 donation gets you on the team as an Urban Scout and allows you to help with the research stage, while a $300 donation qualifies you to be an Urban Icon who researches, attends two workshops, and beta tests the app.