PPUCHA (Prenatal Public Chair Reservation System)

PPUCHA

PPUCHA, or the Prenatal PUblic CHAir, was developed by Jakeun Lee, Hyeyoung Ryu, Se Jeen Park, and Soohyun Kim to help alleviate some of the struggles pregnant women face in the public sphere, particularly on subways.

Many argue that the current priority seats are inefficient, as they prevent people from sitting down when there are no pregnant women on board. In order to address these concerns, the developers of PPUCHA set out to design a system that will allow non-pregnant users to sit down, while simultaneously inducing them to yield their seat when a pregnant woman boards the train. PPUCHA utilizes the KakaoTalk Chatbot/Plus Friend system and barcode scanners to ensure that expecting mothers will be able to sit. The media content that plays in the back will socially “shame” nonpregnant users to give up their seats when a pregnant user scans their codes. In addition, the development team of PPUCHA created a website (www.ppucha.herokuapp.com), which can be accessed via a QR code, to share information on healthcare, laws, and social benefits in place for pregnant women.

The Problem

PPUCHA solves two primary social problems: convenience of the expecting mothers and the uncomfortableness of the passengers who yield their seats.

The visualization below depicts the degree of uncomfortable experience that expecting mothers have faced during their pregnancy. Surprisingly, 56% of respondents said that their experiences in public transportation were inconvenient. Also, 60% of expecting mothers haven’t had the experience of being yielded on public transportation.

Some passengers do not yield their seats intentionally. PPUCHA tries to encourage these people to yield their seats using indirect public shame and give a sense of pressure.

How It Works

PPUCHA solves these problems by securing the seats for expecting mothers while less aggressively socially shaming the non-pregnant passengers who are sitting on PPUCHA via the back display.

Expecting mothers are given customized barcodes through the KakaoTalk chatbot. In addition to the visual exhibition, we have prepared a website (ppucha.herokuapp.com) that can be accessed via the given QR code.

Final Prototype

Authentification Process

When pregnant mothers enter their personal information, the information will be encrypted and processed into a unique barcode image. The barcode can be used as an authentification method to claim priority seats in the public transportation.

Installation Example