Sakuya Araki, Yu Shibuya: A Smartphone Application Connecting People Who Need Support on Public Transportation with Those Who Are Willing to Support, The Transactions of Human Interface Society, 2021, Volume 23, Issue 4, Pages 373-382, Released November 25, 2021, Online ISSN 2186-8271, Print ISSN 1344-7262, https://doi.org/10.11184/his.23.4_373 (in Japanese)
Abstract
Help mark is used by people who have disabilities or illnesses but are not easily recognized from the outside. However, its popularity is not high due to problems such as “concern about the reaction of people around me when I use it” and “not being noticed even if I wear it”. In this study, we propose and implement a smartphone application to connect people who need support with people who are willing to support them in public transportation. We conducted an experiment to determine whether the proposed application was easy to use or not. The results showed that the size of the buttons was almost appropriate, the color scheme of the screen was fine, the button icons were easy to understand, and the free descriptions indicated that the system was easy to use. In addition, 10 out of 12 participants answered that they would like to use it on a real train. Among the problems found in the experiment, we fixed the problem of not knowing when the connection was established without notification. We also fixed the problem that the supporters had to keep looking at the screen while waiting for the connection.
