So last Thursday we had a crit at Uni and it went rather well. One thing I gained from it was that I’m being a bit too specific with my hardware I could potentially use for Metro, and indeed Lastminute.com for their advertising. So, it’s time to think a bit further forward, and forget about what we have here and now.
So, changing my Metro idea a little, I’m going to try and sway towards instant touch transfer/reading, much like an Oyster Card.
Unless your from London, or indeed been to London and traveled on the Tube, Bus or Tram, you may not know what an Oyster Card is. It’s no bigger than a credit card and you touch it onto small Yellow pads when you get on your chosen form of transport. (Or at the ticket turnstiles at tube stations.) When you press the card to the receiver, it deducts your fare from your balance on the card. When you run out of pre-paid money, you simply pop to a shop, station or ticket machine with an Oyster reader and top it up with as much cash as you like. Now, I could start going into how it works and all that malarky (RFID Tags. 
) but I wont as it’s just the principle of the card I wish to use.
One thing that I didn’t think of which Annabeth mentioned in the crit is that if I was to implement the screen and character into a station, the aim of the initial idea was that the Metro character would talk to people as they walk past, and as it’s pointing people out it would make them stop, then other people would stop and watch it happen. Annabeth mentioned that if it’s in a station, people will want to get to where their going without being stopped. For all I know their about to miss a train, in a general rush or just arrogant suitcase sporting suits who think they own the air they breath. (Travel on the London Underground at peak times and you will know what I mean, lol.) So maybe my initial idea would be better suited for a bus-stop where people are sitting around waiting for their bus.
So, this idea revolves around more attracting people to the board and having a lot less interaction between character and human, but some touch.
Future gazing… I read somewhere that newspapers will be digital in several years time. Either on Kindle like devices, or OLED papers which just change per new day. So you pay a subscription to… The Guardian for example, and every day it will download that days paper to your device. (Not sure how, but me no need to know really.) which in turn makes us more Eco Friendly by not tossing out lots of old papers and saves the trees and stuff. My current idea is based on the boards screen being a big surface of sending data, and, as people walk past and touch their device on the screen, it will download them that day’s Metro ready for them to read on their travels. When they do that, the on screen character will react to that and say “Thank You” and look towards where the touch was made. Maybe mix it up and every so often the response changes. So one day he will thank people as they touch-to-download the paper, anther day he might make “Pew-pew” sounds and jump and point at the area of touch kinda like “Pew-pew, I just sent you a paper by lazorzzzz” (But he wont say all that, people will know what’s the kinda thing that’s going on.) Obviously that would mean commuters will need the receiving device to red the paper… but in a way this could be global throughout all papers and people choose which paper they want, when they have chosen they touch the device to their chosen paper and voila, it’s downloaded. Maybe even like an Oyster the device has money on it, so if it’s a paid for paper then it can deduct monies from the device as they pick a paper.. or two?
It needs a lot more working on, but it’s a start. 
