Hourworld app android#

“Time banking is valuable because it helps build a sense of community without the exchange of money,” said Burgevin. She now advocates for the time bank, extolling the virtues and benefits of the system and encouraging people to sign up.

Originally from upstate New York, where she participated in the very active Ithaca Hours time bank, Burgevin came to State College three years ago and became a member of Happy Valley Timebank. Burgevin said that while the time bank’s members often use the system for very practical tasks - like gathering firewood - some find playful and whimsical ways to earn and spend their hours (like baking and delivering cookies). “I’m interested in exploring why that might be as well as how and why people use time banks the way they do.”Īnne Burgevin, a coordinator for Happy Valley Timebank, has seen how different people use time banks in different ways. time bank user is a middle-aged, lower-income, highly educated Caucasian female,” said Carroll. “We know, for example, that the average U.S. In addition to studying the balance between context awareness and privacy, Carroll is also interested in learning more about why some people are drawn to using time banks and others are not. “I want to explore how we can use context awareness to enhance the app while also maintaining the privacy of the users.” “This has been one of the challenges of the project and also a topic of interest in my time bank research,” said Carroll.

Penn State, in collaboration with Palo Alto Research Center and Carnegie-Mellon University, recently received a second NSF grant to investigate the use of content awareness in the app.īut while context awareness allows apps to customize a user’s experience, it also uses personal information - like location and interaction history - to do so. The app does this with the help of context awareness, which Carroll says is a hot topic in the human-computer interaction field and is the ability of mobile devices to use interaction history and current location to suggest nearby opportunities to users. Or, they can sign up using Happy Valley Timebank’s website and then log in using the app. They can open the app and click “Join hOurworld,” where they can choose from nearby time banks. Those who have downloaded hOurworld can join Happy Valley Timebank from their smartphones.

Hourworld app android#

“I was also interested in researching time banking practices, like why some people time bank and others don’t, and privacy issues that arise when using mobile apps.”Ĭarroll received an National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded grant to complete the app - called hOurworld - in collaboration with the time bank network of the same name for both Android and iOS smartphones. “We’re a very mobile society, and a time banking app would make recording hours or looking for a service much more convenient,” said Carroll. But in an ever-more-mobile society, Jack Carroll - a distinguished professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) - got the idea to create an app in which members of time banking communities could record their hours, post jobs and hire other members from their smartphones.

Until recently, time banking had been mostly managed with desktop transaction systems. Watt, a member of the local Happy Valley Timebank, earned hours baking and delivering homemade cookies before redeeming them for sewing lessons. Someone may trade an hour of raking leaves for an hour of roof patching, for example. Members of a time bank earn hours by performing services, bank those hours and then redeem them for a service from another member. Time banking is the exchange of services based on the number of hours it takes to complete them. Sometimes - with the help of a system called time banking - it can be turned into a wool cape. For Katherine Watt, a cookie isn’t just a cookie.