What We Made
We envisioned a new, more intuitive AI-powered Omnivox interface to help students with navigation. It also includes a "Bathroom Finder" feature to help students quickly locate the nearest available and accessible bathroom based on crowd levels which can help save time during busy class transitions. The inspiration behind this project comes from personal experience with frustrating and cluttered procedures to access and accomplish simple tasks on Omnivox and its related platforms that we, as students, must use throughout our studies. We also related to the frustration with finding available washrooms that were not under cleaning or have a waiting line between during the small breaks for class transitions. Because of all this, we wished to improve Omnivox and create a friendly, intuitive tool that would help students, especially the new ones, use the Omnivox platform that gives them helpful information anytime they need it and fast while also having this extra feature of washroom finder depending on the college.
AI Tools Used & Why
- ChatGPT: Brainstorming app features, user experience ideas and ethical considerations
- Claude.AI: Creation of interface -Perplexity: Reformulating prompts for conciseness -Bolt: Creation of interface and correction of the interfaces made by Claude
The Process
For an even more detailed breakdown of the process, consult the video. We started by brainstorming the basic features of the app, focusing on the possible student's needs. We created initial designs, evaluated them and improved them based on AI suggestions and our own reflections. In effect, we imitated all the stages of a true software development process in a fraction of the time. We also considered the ethical implications throughout the process, particularly regarding the collection of information for the Bathroom Finder feature and personal student information by the AI assistant to help them track their day to day classes and any other personal request that can put at risk privacy.
Ethical & Practical Insights
It is largely irrelevant whether the use of AI itself is unethical, as it is an inherent conceit of the assignment. Privacy was a major concern. We brainstormed several non-invasive solutions, such as using time-based predictions instead of tracking individuals. We also reflected on the limits of AI-generated suggestions and made careful human decisions during the design of the Smart Omnivox Assistant. We also had in mind how using AI throughout this project affects the environment through its high energy/water use, especially when we had to create a lot of images and diagrams as many of them did not fit our standards or what we wanted and needed constant feedback for improvement. There was also a concern about the presence of two music tracks we did not produce in the explanatory video. While the musicians were credited, YouTube’s copyright protection system saw no issue, and it is commonplace for YouTubers to liberally use freely available tracks for personal projects, the issue of music in this submission deserves more thorough ethical consideration.
What Was Learned (and accomplishments)
This project taught us how to creatively collaborate with AI tools while maintaining human oversight and our critical thinking of what feels best practically and morally. We learned about the importance of clear design, student needs, ethical reflection and continuous improvement. We also learned that while today’s AI systems are extremely fast, they are just as prone to misinterpreting instructions and not acting in self-aware ways. No project of this scale can be completed with ChatGPT with just a handful of prompts. The prompter must be directly engaged with the entire production process. Evidently, this project allowed us to create designs we could never have achieved without the use of AI.
What's next for ONMIVOX FOR THE PEOPLE
If we ever continue this project, the main thing to look into would be the intricate behind-the-scenes systems that run Omnivox and adapting them to work efficiently with an improved user experience.
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