Inspired by the NYC Big Apps competition, students recently designed NYC-related phone apps for Chris Fahey’s Interaction Design Fundamentals class. Using the NYC Data Mine and resources like Google maps, students drilled usefulness into statistics with the creation of apps such as “Book ‘em,” forgoing the mire of the NYPL website to locate the nearest local library, or “Million Tree,” allowing locals to adopt a tree and raise awareness for NYC’s urban forest movement.
The New Green City app featured below by Gene Lu is an outtake of the author’s design statement from his blog, where he details more about the app, as well as visual documentations of other projects from the program.
Users can also integrate other iPhone apps into New Green City, such as Every Trail (cycling app) and Nike+ (running app). Through these additional apps, users can increase the sustainability level of their district depending on frequency of usage. Users are also able to challenge friends in other districts to determine who’s more “green” based on the data pulled from the other apps installed. By establishing an app that allows for integration with other apps, a mobile app ecosystem is created, allowing users to transfer existing data from compatible apps already on their iPhone, along with injecting a social aspect into the process.
From now through the end of the year, we’ll be posting more student work as we go toward the end of semester one of the inaugural class of the MFA Interaction Design program.
