CityTechLink

The Problem:
City Tech students are commuters. The average student spends 47 minutes traveling to campus in one direction , adding up to more than 500 hours of unstructured, unproductive transit time every academic year. Despite sharing the same subway cars and the same destination, students arrive on campus feeling isolated, drained, and disconnected from their academic community.

After speaking with classmates, three consistent pain points emerged. First, commute time is wasted time and there is no structure or intentional design around how students spend those hours. Second, students experience a deep sense of isolation during their commute, riding alone even when surrounded by peers heading to the same place. Third, there is no shared City Tech identity that extends beyond the campus walls. Community stops at the front door.

Our Thinking
The core insight driving our design was simple: the commute already happens. We were not asking students to change their routine or add something new to their day. We were asking a different question entirely. The question was what if we reimagined what that time actually felt like?
We started talking to our classmates and quickly realized that the frustration was universal. Everyone felt it. The long ride, the isolation, the sense that an hour of your day just disappeared. That shared experience became the foundation of our design.
We also knew that any solution requiring students to approach strangers or interact publicly would never work. People are tired in the morning. They have headphones in. The last thing anyone wants is to be put on the spot. So from the very beginning, we committed to building something that felt low pressure, optional, and completely in the student's control. The experience had to come to them, not the other way around. That thinking led us to a two-track approach. One digital, one physical. Two entry points into the same connected experience.

The Solution:
CityTechLink is a two-part system designed to transform dead transit time into something productive, social, and genuinely worth showing up for.

Track 1 — The App
The CityTechLink mobile app uses AI to match students commuting on the same subway line in real time, creating shared game lobbies and study sessions without requiring any in-person interaction. The heart of the app is a feature we called Smart Study Sessions. Instead of generic flashcards or trivia, the AI reads a student's actual syllabus and generates a personalized quiz built around their most urgent upcoming exam or deadline. Every match is also intentional. Students are paired by major, current courses, and commute line, so the connections feel relevant rather than random.
Beyond studying, students can jump into optional social gaming modes including head-to-head quizzes, collaborative puzzles, and group trivia. Everything is silent by default. Voice and chat only unlock if the student chooses to turn them on. The whole experience is built around one idea which is that you engage on your own terms, or not at all.

Track 2 — The Commute Hub
The CityTechLink Commute Hub is a physical digital display installation concept designed for Jay Street–MetroTech station. When a student walks onto that platform, the screen shows them how many City Tech students are currently in transit, today's leaderboard from the in-app challenges, and a prompt to join an active challenge before their train arrives. A QR code on the display drives new users to the app every single day without any extra effort. The physical installation and the digital app are designed to feed each other. The Hub builds awareness and campus identity in the real world, while the app keeps the experience alive throughout the ride.
The platform is powered by four AI components. A Syllabus LLM that reads course materials and generates personalized study content. A matching algorithm that pairs students by route and academic overlap. An AI video system that powers the onboarding experience. And an adaptive display engine that makes the Hub screen responsive to live student activity in real time.

The Outcome:
CityTechLink was developed in under 24 hours as part of a two-day AI Design Hackathon hosted by Designpreneurs, alongside COMD at NYC College of Technology. The project was awarded 3rd place out of a competitive field of student teams.

Deliverables:
Live clickable prototype, Product Requirements Document, AI-generated pitch video, two-track design presentation

Tools Used:
Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Lovable, Luma AI, Flora, Gamma

Team:
Malachi Patton, Valeria Lee, Vicky Dominguez