It struck me as I was waiting at the bus stop the other day that in urban living is a lot of standing in queues. The bus stop follows the honor system by default, and people are generous to a fault (at least where I live in Chicago), but could technology help?
What if you could start a queue using your smartphone when you arrive at the stop? Anybody arriving after you would look for your queue, and join it.When the bus arrives, it automatically notify each person in the order in which they joined the queue that it was their turn.
Now this might be too slow for a bus stop where once the bus arrives, everyone gets in in a few seconds, but any other place that involves waiting in a queue, this might help avoid queue anxiety.
And now for the commercial version: Any organization that needs to provide service to people has these elaborate systems that show the "Now serving" display could just buy the InstantQ software that would run on a PC and "host a queue". Anybody with a phone could join, and as long as we provide the ability to join a queue via text, we could cover most of the population.
What if you could start a queue using your smartphone when you arrive at the stop? Anybody arriving after you would look for your queue, and join it.When the bus arrives, it automatically notify each person in the order in which they joined the queue that it was their turn.
Now this might be too slow for a bus stop where once the bus arrives, everyone gets in in a few seconds, but any other place that involves waiting in a queue, this might help avoid queue anxiety.
And now for the commercial version: Any organization that needs to provide service to people has these elaborate systems that show the "Now serving" display could just buy the InstantQ software that would run on a PC and "host a queue". Anybody with a phone could join, and as long as we provide the ability to join a queue via text, we could cover most of the population.
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