Design an app which guides Mo into the right direction at Zurich HB

 
A young man with black hair and wearing black sunglasses is sitting on a swing on a beach.
 

About Mo

Let’s start with the bad news: My name is not Daredevil, but Mo. Admittedly, I am nearly as cool as Daredevil and also a superhero who is on duty Monday to Friday. Besides my status as a superhero, there are quite a few other things I can put in my diary. I am blind, interested in informatics, sports and generally everything under the sun. Only games like “I spy with my little eye” are - surprisingly - not among my favorite activities ;-)

Challenge

The following problem arises when you’re at Zurich main station. If you arrive at a platform by train as a blind person, you don’t know where the closest underpass is. Admittedly, you can just start walking and at some point you will arrive at an underpass. But imagine the following: You arrive, you get out of the train and the closest underpath is just two meters to your left. But you go to the right. The advantage is obvious: You take your 10’000 steps which is surely good for health reasons… But if you’re in a hurry, for example since you need to save the world or need to get the last toilet paper at the supermarket ;-), if would help a lot if you knew on which side the closest underpath is. And exactly here the challenge comes into play: Mo would like to have an app which shows him the direction of the closest underpath - no matter, ob which platform at Zurich HB he arrives.

Solution

Mo had asked for a solution to find the nearest underpass when he steps out of a train at Zurich HB. The team developed a smartphone app that lists the available underpasses sorted by distance and indicates if they are to the left or to the right. The built-in text-to-speech can then read this list to Mo and allows him to choose his preferred option. The biggest challenge after the Hackathon is to improve the accuracy of the indoor localization which is based on beacons located at Zurich HB. The team handed over their findings and the concept for the app to SBB. Fingers crossed that this app will be deployed to many users of SBB inclusive in the near future.