assignment 10: Christina Caiozzo

In Comm345, we had to try and come up with an interface that would try and reduce single-passenger traffic in Ithaca. Too many people driving their cars creates congestion and is bad for the environment. Our system’s aim was to encourage carpooling and public transportation through a computer interface.

Vieweg et al. (2008) talks a lot about how the public, namely the Virginia Tech community was responsible for sharing information with each other directly after the shootings took place. Popular social networking sites, specifically facebook, made this kind of collective intelligence possible. The timeline shows how quickly people were posting to the “I’m Ok at VT” facebook group, which allowed for friends and family to keep updated on the status of those they knew. Vieweg et al. (2008) focuses on the social mechanisms that allow for this kind of distributed problem solving. One reason why people used facebook to disseminate information in such a successful way was because all were motivated to provide accurate information in order to ease concerns, or show respect for mourning families. Having a motivation to use technology is crucial.

The system we designed to reduce single passenger traffic was a social networking mobile application called “iRide.” It worked based on a GPS system, so that when users signed on, they could identify where they were going, and it would tell them other users in the area who were going to the same place. They could then choose the “carpool” feature, and arrange to go to their destination with someone else. There were also “walking,” and “bus” features. Obviously the problem we were trying to solve with this interface is not a tragedy, so there is no motivation on the part of the users to alleviate panic. However, they should be motivated to use this technology because of how easy it is, and for its benefits to the environment. Also, people might be selfishly motivated, because it is often easier to get a ride from someone else than to drive yourself. In this case, the technology fosters environmental awareness and at the same time, allows people to form a bond with fellow community members.