Inspiration

Over a billion people suffer from their disabilities of which most of them stay invisible (asthma, Parkinson, autism, etc). Not only do these people have to fight with their disabilities, but they also experience exclusion from societal interactions and withdraw from public life. Many had bad customer experience, especially the way how service agents deal with disabilities causes great concern.

What it does

We provide customer service agents with additional information on their customer's disabilities to foster The user selects his/her type of disabilities in the app. Once the customer approaches a shop, the information on disabilities and specific recommendations are displayed at the point-of-sale (POS). This enables the customer service agent to address needs and provide an outstanding customer experience. This not only benefits the customer but also let the offering company gain a competitive advantage.

Example You have epilepsy and are going on a long-haul flight from Munich to San Francisco. Instead of proactively approaching the service agents to communicate about your potential risk, you do not have to think about it again, as everything is handled automatically. You onboard the airplane where a friendly stewardess welcomes you with an additional blanket (which decreases the risk of cold-temperature related seizures) and assures you about anti-seizure medication on board. You feel relaxed and are looking forward to your upcoming internship at Microsoft in Mountain View.

How we built it

We created an iOS app for people where they can select disabilities. When they come close to one of our beacons, an event is triggered which will then enqueue the app user into the beacon queue. The closer the user gets to the beacon which will be e.g. a Point-Of-Sales, he will move up in the queue. If it's his turn at the POS, his disabilities will be shown at the desktop of the system to the customer service agent. As soon as he walks away, he is dequeued again.

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we are proud of

What we learned

Daniel

• Building the backend using Django as well as MongoDB

Niclas

• Building the iOS app using Swift 5

Leander

• how to apply react.js for web app development, specifically how components interact

What's next for Curic

We are convinced that our solution has the potential to create a massive impact and we want

Further use cases include but are not limited to:

• Ticket and vending machines which automatically increase the font size for visually impaired people
• Diabetes patients getting information on the bread units of their meals in restaurants
• People with autism enter football stadium through a separate entrance to avoid sensory overload
• Rheuma patients get shopping items carried to car

Built With

• django
• mongodb
• react
• sketch
• swift