This week I had an informal chat with Paul on my transport app project. I ran over some of the progress that I have currently made as well as my idea for a brand. Paul liked the idea for my transport app, to base it on the mission of encouraging the adoption of public transport to further reduce congestion in Northern Ireland.

I also went over some of the research that I had conducted to validate my idea. This included some findings from a survey carried out by Translink on the usage of transport in the region of Northern Ireland as well as evidence that congestion is on the rise and CO2 emissions are increasing. We also checked out Air Quality levels for Northern Ireland to see firsthand how bad the situation was.

Additionally, I mentioned to Paul that I wanted to add some sort of gamification to this app in a way that involved users helping the environment even more and reducing the level of CO2. Paul suggested the idea of hooking my app up to a company called Ecolgi which plants trees. By signing up for an Ecologi plan, they will plant a certain number of trees for you depending on what plan you are signed up to. This sounded like a great idea to me as it meant that users could tackle global warming directly just by using public transport services.

The idea of hooking this service up to my app got my creativity flowing. I then began to consider the different ways in which I could link the two together. I concluded my thinking by suggesting that I add a points system to the app that rewarded users for purchasing tickets. By gathering up these points, users could then redeem Ecologi plans or even a certain number of trees.

Furthermore, whilst chatting with Paul we discussed my brand. I was a little unsure about my brand at first as it was a rather abstract name and logo (Circle). But Paul was on board with the idea and logo as he felt it made sense especially after I explained the meaning behind it. This made me quite happy as I had already spent some time crafting the brand with a logo, typography, colour, and application.