Passage Keeper
Project Overview
The stranger sitting beside on a long-haul flight, the hum of a city waking up in the rain, the warmth of a café tucked in a quiet alley—memories once vivid, now softened by time. But what if a forgotten boarding pass could bring them back?
This project imagines a future where someone finds an old, dust-covered ticket, only to realize it’s more than a record of transit—it’s a portal into another’s journey. By scanning it, the system extracts location details, generates an AI-powered travel story, and displays it on an OLED screen, offering a fleeting glimpse into the traveler’s past. Blurring the line between memory and fiction, it lets a long-lost trip resurface once more.
My Role
Interaction Designer
Type
Individual
Date
January 2025 - February 2025
Tool
Discover
Concept Map - Why boarding passes?
Tight/Loose Shoulder Straps
Storyboards
Interaction Process Diagrams
Delivery
Hardware Preparation & Connection
Process
User Interaction
The user presses a physical button to start the system.
Through sketches and ideation, I explored different ways to bring boarding passes to life, from RFID-triggered displays to AI-generated narratives and soundscapes. I experimented with various interaction models, considering how travelers might engage with these artifacts in unexpected ways. Ultimately, I combined the strongest elements into a system where scanning a boarding pass would extract its location details, generate a unique AI-powered travel story, and display it dynamically on an OLED screen.
System Architecture Diagram
Sequence Diagram
Define
Brainstorm
Loss of Personal Narratives - Boarding passes are often discarded or kept as static mementos, failing to capture the depth of travel experiences.
Forgotten Context & Emotion - Over time, the emotions, encounters, and atmospheres of a journey fade, leaving behind only the destination and flight details.
Lack of Interaction - Traditional travel memorabilia are passive objects that do not engage users in a meaningful way.
Image Capture (ESP32S3 + OV2640)
The onboard camera (OV2640) captures an image of the boarding pass.
Text Recognition (Google Vision API OCR)
The captured image is sent to Google Vision API, which extracts the city name from the boarding pass.
Story Generation (ZeroWidth LLM)
The recognized city name is sent to ZeroWidth LLM, which generates a travel story based on the location.
Display Output (OLED Auto-Scrolling)
Final Deliverable
The ESP32S3 processes the AI-generated story and displays it on an OLED screen in an auto-scrolling format.