For the 07-08 semester, Berkeley Innovation is currently working on the following projects:

• Project Clash: At the beginning of class, students waiting to enter a lecture hall or classroom impede the flow of students leaving said location. This blockage benefits neither the entering nor exiting students in terms of time.

• Project BetterPack: Off the shelf backpacks are often clumsy, heavy, and hard to use for student needs. A BetterPack is designed specifically to meet student needs, including the ability to quickly access pockets and compartments without the need to remove it from ones back.

• Project Outside-In: Ever left your house with the wrong kind of clothing on for the weather outside? Say, shorts and a T-shirt, when really outside it’s windy and cold? Outside-In aims to get tackle this and other problems by giving the user a sense of the outside environment. Problems such as SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), sense of time and physical aspects such as how to dress are covered in this project.

Last semester’s Project Archive:

For the 06-07 semester, Berkeley Innovation is currently working on the following projects:

• eFlyer - Use LCD and Plasma screens with low cost thin clients to display announcements digitally across a campus network. Long term goals: provide digital means of flyering, reduce paper flyering. Working in partnership with the ASUC.

• Better Bin - Replace exsisting dorm waste baskets with one that is capable of recycling cans, bottles and papers. Long term goals: increase dorm recycling/divert waste rates. Working in partnership with Campus Recycling.

• RSF Waitloss - Provide digital means of reserving workout equipment. Make reserving process faster, more efficient and pleasant. Give users at-a-glance information about which machines are free and when. Working in partnership with the RSF.

Older Project Archive:

These are some of the projects from 2001-2004.

• Extra Sensory Phone Find a design solution to the problem of mismatched expectations in the phone information chain - i.e. [callers]<=/=>[receivers]. These problems arise because callers don’t know why receivers are not answering; receivers don’t always want to or are unable to answer calls; and whenever either happens, the voice mail system takes too long so it is ineffective on both sides.

• Up and Downs Investigate the elevator environment, specifically the two-fold problem of: 1) awkward silences that arise because people simply don’t want to talk, the ride is too short for conversation, the space is closed and overly intimate, or there is nothing in common anyway; and 2) awkward actions, such as pushing the close door button repeatedly, reaching for buttons at the same time, double riders, or being the only person talking.

• Shuttle Tracking Service BI’s Shuttle-Tracking Service (STS) provides students with information conveying the whereabouts of active buses on campus bus routes. The primary benefit of this service is to enhance student safety on campus. With the knowledge of where buses are and when they will arrive at any given stop, a user is more likely to take the bus, keeping them off the streets. This service also hopes to improve the quality of students lives by saving them both time and energy in transporting themselves to, from, and around campus.

Sound interesting? Join us and innovate together. Please contact us for more information and when our recruiting sessions are held.