Hack Access Experience

Ideation with Eion, Dillon, Harsh Chandra, Catja Carlson, Manish, Kevin Glynn and Amanda Lucey

How might we improve facilities at the gates for passengers with diverse abilities?

On the first day we were given colour coded bracelets depending on our occupation. I had a green bracelet which indicated that I’m a designer. We were given some food and drinks before we were briefed on what we will be doing in the next few days. After the briefing we were put into groups. Each group had 1 of each occupation. Once we were put into our groups we introduced each other and getting to know what we do. We were given the question “How might we improve facilities at the gates for passengers with diverse abilities?” . With the question we began to think of pain points people could have at the gate in the airport. After that we started to think of what our concept could be for the problem. We had a faint idea of an App similar to Deliveroo that gives services to people in the airport.

For the second day, we had most of the day to research and start to focus on our concept. We were able to establish some research by interviewing a few volunteers who have disabilities to see their story in the airport and any difficulties they have in the airport but especially in the gate area. We were able to get a lot data about the airport because Dillon works there and he was able to get flight data and a estimate of daily customer data in the airport. We were also able to get a lot stories from Eoin who works with people who have disabilities and have also traveled with them in groups. During our conversation I felt that a lot of the time we tend to go out of the gate area and try to solve problems outside of our given area. So it was really hard to focus on this one area on it’s own because there could’ve been problem before and after the gate area.

During the second day we also had a chance to speak to a few mentors that helped guide us through our project. It was really interesting to talk to about our ideas to experts to see their perspective and how their knowledge could help us continue.

For the third day because of the limited time we had we had to start making our App and start to get our concept and ideas down. We came together as a group and finalised our ideas and started working on the presentation and actually prototyping the app. We sketched a few design for the app and I was able to make a quick small little prototype on AdobeXD.