Last year, I had to research any form of marginalization happening on campus. I decided to research the impact of the increasing number of luxury housing on the main campus. The biggest issue I came across was those students who could not afford these housings typically got pushed further away from the main campus.
This year, I was interested in taking another look into this research of marginalization I had previously done. My main objective was to decrease this gap between lower and higher students caused by these luxury housings. Specifically, I wanted to look further into the problems caused by this push away from the main campus. As this was a locational issue, the main problems to solve were security and transportation. When thinking about both of these problems, I realized that tackling transportation will help solve the issue of security as well.
From here, I researched how to improve transportation through utilizing my specialty in UI/UX design. I decided to improve busing in UIUC. By providing real time location of buses and having alarms to notify students of bus arrival times, I could either reduce the downtime students spend waiting for buses or help students catch early arrival buses. This reduction in time spent especially helps in security. Students waiting for buses late at night because of inaccurate times increases the likelihood of potential harm. Through solving these issues of transportation and security, I can help decrease the disparity between higher and lower income students.
