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Students Design NYC “In Transit”

For their final projects in Jason Santa Maria’s Communicating Design course, students were asked to identify a problem within New York City’s subway system and to design a solution that addressed the problem. Students researched the system in depth, including a class trip to the New York City Transit Museum, and addressed a variety of problems ranging from learning the subway system to keeping track of how much time is spent in the system overall.

Below, a selection of students explain their projects. Photos from all projects are available at the department’s flickr stream.

Children’s Subway Map
Carmen Dukes

Colorful NYC subway map used for project proposal that uses RFID tags to determine the realtime location of subway trains and popular tourist locations.

“Train Spy is an application ecosystem that I developed for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Train Spy utilizes technological advancements with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and the uniqueness of the iPhone platform to offer an up to the minute, real time subway monitoring system. With the RFID keeping track of every train’s position, the iPhone allows you to view this information and plan accordingly. In addition to the application for iPhone users, there is an in-station viewer installed in every subway station that allows for non-mobile users to take advantage of the system.”

See all student work for In Transit.

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