Designing With Web - Part 3: week 1

Reinforce car sharing experience for schools thanks to social networks.

Group 46
Romain MAILLOT, Morgane MARCHAL, Thomas LEVASSORT, Qi LIU, Noémie LANE

Mindmeister conjoint exploration: Click here to see our MindMap

Project 1: Bring kids to school

Context

when? where? who? why?

In a society where both parents work, where they both work more and more and are often busy, people regret not to spend more time with their kids. Since life is getting more and more expensive roads are really crowded at all time, and it is polluting a lot, people could try and find an alternative solution. The car sharing solution would be a great idea! This would put fewer cars on the road; it would be less crowded and way nicer for people to share a ride with others, especially their children in order to enjoy more time together.

As people spend an average of 9 hours 35 minutes in transport per week, according to "Le Parisien", should it, as least be a nice time spent with others ? That's why we decided to create a website/applet allowing people from the same neighborhoor, with kids in the same school, to get in contact whenever they want and to share their car with one another. This is a great way to get people from the same area to contact each other, met and discuss to establish trust and help each other. As they do so, they can discuss the ride to school and the possible share of those rides and establish trust to share a car or rent a car to another person.

People could help each other, helping those who lack time and those who lack money, think less about themselves and think more about others. Those parents would be able to offer some help and reciprocities to the others that help them out. For example, some people might be interest in money to pay for the gaz of their car but some others might also agree for another type of exchange, such as babysitting (the other parent babysits their kid while they have something to do for example), or the person runs an arrend for the other while they still have their car (grocery shopping for example).

The idea is to create a quick contact, and a great exchange of services between people.

Target

for whom?

Public transport are not always accessible, available, nor sure, would parents be more reassured knowing their children are going safely to school? It is also a better way for people to be helpful and to enjoy a pleasant ride bringing their kids to school.
It also present an amazing interest for people who might not have many cars in their home, not every parent can afford to have 2 or more cars in their home. Those people might still want to take their kids to school sometimes, so they could borrow someone else's car and share the ride with others kids from their child's school.

And it is the same for parents that need to save money, the interest of car sharing is that, by sharing the car, taking the kids to school, the compensation will not cost them especially money, they can also make an arrend for the owner of the car, or render service to the owner.
Finally, this implies that a person, owner of the car, proposes a ride to his children’s school for others as well. This would help other parents, and make the ride to school a lot more fun for children as they can meet and make friends that way. This will also prevent some people from doing an “unnecessary” ride to the school that would crowd the roads.

Service offered

what? how?

The idea is that, people who do not have time to bring or retrieve their kids from school, would be pleased to meet people from the same area to bring their kids, for them to school. Public transports are not always safe, nor the best solution to go to school in some villages since they might not even exist; therefore a car share would be more interesting. So the service would put people, from the same neighborhood, in contact. As parents are not always eager to trust strangers with their kids, there would be a double check system. First, the school would provide informations about the kids and parents to make sure that no one else is connecting to the site. Then, the parents would have to answer a certain number of questions and present their identity card to the site so that it could be verified. Finally, the site would give the parties information to contact one another, either to meet each other, or to talk on the phone in order to reassure both parties.

Then, they could begin the collaboration as one parent bring and retrieve the kids from school, the other one offers a compensation; either money or a service. For instance, a parent could go quickly grocery shopping for another since he/she is borrowing the car of someone else. Or, if one of them loves to work in the garden, they could do some work outside for the owner of the car. This system of service can also be really interesting for both parties. That way, they could either choose to pay the person or the save money and render a service.

Identity

describe the universe around your service by creating a mood board and name your service accordingly (see name in title)

Web interface

How does your project relates to Web? Describe use cases
On the future website of your service, how will users access your service? Describe scenario of utilisation

This project is entirely designed to work as a social media service and the platform would be completly online. It would feature a system of geolocalisation in order for people from the same area to find each other, since it is more interesting for parents to work in collaboration with people that are closer to them geographically.

Furthermore, the school would provide a certain number of information and access to this site for each parent asking for it. So parents would already have an access with a name and password given by the school. Those name and password would be different for each and every family. To make sure, it is the parent of the child that wants to access the site, some confidential information would be asked to the parent. Information which would be related to the information transmitted by the school. Finally, the computer would check the answers given by the person with the information given by the school to verify the identity of the parent.

A further step, to completly reassure the parents, would be to check the identity card of the parent that subscribed. This entire process would be digitalised, using information that are in the computer and comparing them with the information given by the person. If an error was to occur, or someone answered wrong a certain number of time, this would be sent back to a person, who would check the process and the errors made to prevent anyone

Once this entire process has been verified, there would be a message box for each parent interested to contact others and an agenda to propose a meeting. This would be assimilated as social media since people can exchange and express their advices or points of view. Parents would be vividly encouraged to meet or at least to talk via the phone to one another, in order to make sure they trust entirely the possible driver. Owners of cars would be able to propose their car by putting on the agenda the moments when it is free.

Then, as people subscribe of the site, they would be able to choose if they either want to compensate the drive with money, or service or maybe both. This would allow the owner to choose a person that interest him the most and to get in contact with the person in order to know what type of service they could offer, when they would be available to render it, ...

To conclude, there would be a system of notation for each driver, each ride and each service rendered in order to identify the people that would be better to trust, ... A comment would also have to be left, in order to explain the grade that the person got, either good or bad since point of views are sometimes really personnal.

This would all be really easy and intuitive. Interested parents would only have to adress themselves to the school to say they are interested and a name and password would be generated for them. For the first connection, they would only have to answer personal questions to which they know the answers since they concern them and their family. Finally, they just have to put up an identity card for verification and their profil would be complete. The system of paiement would be automatic through bank transfer and everyone knows how to use a online agenda and a message box since everyone uses their mail box everyday. This would be of great interest for many people and easy to use.

Benchmark

List concurrents / relative projects and describe how they relate/differentiate to your project

References

books/films/articles/...

Project 2: Students want "Car Shooling" with USHAS

Ushas is the Hindu goddess of heaven and dawn. She stimulates life and sets the world in motion, exactly the aim of our project.
Context

when? where? who? why?

Nowadays, students are more and more inclined to have a lot of activities, they also want to eat better than before (not pasta or ready-made meals). But this requires a minimum of means. So, many students have a job with their studies. According to the INSEE "if they did not work, the salaried students would have a higher probability of 43 points of succeeding their year”. Thus, a major item of expenditure, which it would be interesting to reduce in order to avoid the necessity of accumulating a job, is transportation. For long distances or holidays, solutions already exist, but what about daily journeys? If we look at higher education schools, they are many to be on the outskirts of big cities, in order to accommodate a growing number of students following higher education (10 times more than 50 years ago according to the French government). There is then a real need to revolutionize these journeys.

Are students then condemned to use public transport, often full and poorly organized? Or do they have to buy their own cars (and pollute more and more) to finally be free? Our answer is no. According to the newspaper Les Echos, "French people spend an average of 24 minutes every day on social networks, a quarter of their total time spent on the Internet", so this is a way for us to create a complete solution, with the aim of being easy to use from a smartphone, with a simple account on social networks, ensuring intuitive visibility. Our idea is to create a mix between what already exists (carsharing and carpooling) to create the “carshooling” service of tomorrow.

Target

for whom?

We recall that our main target are the students, whether they have a car, or not, but want to save money, while using a more pleasant, less expensive, and more user-friendly way to make their short trips , mainly home to school. It is therefore important to target students with a car (they will be called the "owners"), those with a driver's license (they will be called the "drivers") and the others (they will be called the "sharers").

Our goal is to connect users who use their cars on a daily basis and others wishing to change modes of transport (no longer use public transport), but also those who own a car and do not want to leave it unused, but not wishing to leave it to an unknown person either.

Service offered

what? how?

Our service offer is relatively simple, based on the assumption that some students use their cars to come to their school, and that on their way they are likely to be near the home of their classmates, we want to develop a relationship system. The finding is also that sometimes this car stays in the garage all day, while it could benefit some. Thus, instead of making the journey empty and all alone, the owner can then make new encounters, enjoy a more pleasant time, while dampening its path and saving grams of Co2. Similarly, the owner can make his car profitable, even when he is not using it.The depreciation can be done in several ways.

The first is a classic contribution to costs through a calculation of the cost / km depending on the number of people, and the reference of the car (gas / diesel / year ...). Either the people who share their trip are in the same schools and so the "sharer" who does not have a car, offers to help the driver on a topic the owner would have previously expressed the need. Either people who share their journey are not in the same school, and then, either the skills of one can help the other, or so, it offers in exchange a service (cleaning, meal preparation, driving the vehicle for someone who does not have the license ...).

The proposed service requires: geolocation, an online payment system, a calendar system, and a chat system. The social network that offers these features, and on which most students are registered, is Facebook. We can then imagine a native integration to the FB website, by adding a "School Ride" tab and a dedicated app that would group all these services to help bring these students to school, such as a scholar bus 2.0.

Identity

describe the universe around your service by creating a mood board and name your service accordingly (see name in title)

Web interface

How does your project relates to Web? Describe use cases

Our project is about the web because it is a 100% online platform, smart, and using different features already used by students, which, put together, would create a new use. Indeed, all students use the location or the planning of FB to find parties around their home. All students use FB messaging to work together on projects or to be in touch. Thus, our platform will integrate intuitively in the use of the students so as not to generate a long time of adaptation, but on the contrary to allow them an immediate, fast and effective use. Similarly, a payment solution exists on Facebook messenger.

  • A first use case is that of the owner of the car, who wants to reduce its cost of use, or even possession and share a more pleasant time.
  • A second use case is that of a student who borrows public transport but is not satisfied with the services provided (delays, strikes, hardship ...).
  • A third case is that of a student who has a driver's license, but no car, and who could therefore take advantage of someone else's, rather than take the transport, and at the same time, transport the users.

    • The use scenarios are then as follows:

    For the owners: they enter their license plate, the service is connected to the register of registrations and thus the information of the car is recorded. Then, he will issue his typical route for the week (according to his round trip and the name of the school). This will send a signal, an announcement, in its geographical area. He will then inform the type of payment he wants (financial, school aid or nature), and voila. When he does not use the car, he can then self-service his car on certain slots. He can choose to only lend to people with whom he has already traveled (trust) or not.

    For users: they simply enter the name of their school and can view the vehicles or trips offered in their near geographical area, the price of trips, as well as the type of remuneration requested, and make a reservation request. If this request is accepted, a meeting point is agreed between sharers and the owner.

    For the drivers: they can see the announcements of the vacant cars of the owners. It then passes in an interface similar to that of an owner. Since the spirit is to mix car sharing and carpooling, it will have to indicate its route. In return for a free use, it will take care of transporting users, Thus, they can use the car without expenses and the expenses of displacement (+ margin if necessary) are chargeable to the users, and will be paid back to the owner.

    For the practical part, the driver can borrow the car on a slot defined in advance with the owner and must imperatively return the vehicle at the agreed time. The school itself can have a role to play, by encouraging these initiatives that decongest the car parks, by offering reserved places and also by providing electric charging places if necessary.

    Benchmark

    List concurrents / relative projects and describe how they relate/differentiate to your project

    References

    books/films/articles/...