The Scene:

• It’s Saturday. And it’s like so many people have free time on that date.
• You’re manning a convention center ticket check-in booth.
• Your eyesight just isn’t the best. After looking at hundreds, if not thousands of them, it can be a blur.
• You’re using Android.
• There’s a long line and people have different pass or ticket types, sometimes even if they are in the same group.
• You’re processing thousands of people.
• You might not even have a table.
• You’re using Eventbrite Organizer.

I have a tool for you! It’s called PassShout.

In addition to a chime, it’ll read out loud the pass/ticket type.

This greatly reduces operational mistakes. PassShout is part of an implementation of a method in occupational safety called Pointing and Calling. PAC has been adopted widely thoughout Asia and the NYC Metro to reduce incidents on trains systems. By calling out the type, things move faster and mistakes are reduced.

Implementation

This is the first Android app I’ve written in Kotlin. It’s amazing what the Android Accessibility API offers for third party programs to make things more accessible. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an equivalent for iOS.

Kotlin is really easy to read and write. I can see how it’s not Scala and is closer to a usable modern Java. It’s basically the Swift of Android.