We are happy to announce, that two articles about the student project "Firefly" and the significance especially in times of Corona are now published in the newspaper "Berliner Woche" and the online platform "art in berlin".

During the winter term 2019/20 in the project seminar "Softwareproject: Coding IxD", the interdisciplinary teams of design (Weissensee School of Art and Design) and computer science (Freie Universität Berlin) students researched current challenges in Berlin's urban environment: issues ranging from mobility, cultural identity, to road safety and everyday stressors.

The project "Firefly" is a lighting solution that provides passenger information in an immediate way, appealing to human instincts. Making use of data input from previous stations, the firefly modules first light up to indicate exactly where the train will stop, notifying passengers ahead of time whether or not they are standing in range. Once they are on board, the remaining capacity of personal space inside the train carriage is measured and then communicated to passengers in the oncoming station, motivating them to seek out less crowded areas. This visual communication of the data encourages passengers to disperse more evenly across the train and platforms, which should positively impact customer experience and prevent delays. The modules fit onto the existing track infrastructure, functioning as an easy add-on element to any station. Firefly’s installation could serve as a beta-testing phase to test this hypothesis and gather valuable data for future use cases, in order to assess the value this simple data-driven design solution could contribute, to both passengers and BVG.

The articles (in german) can be found here:

• Berliner Woche: "„Glühwürmchen“ helfen bei der Orientierung"
• art in berlin: "Corona und Öffentlicher Nahverkehr"

And a video on the project can be found here.