15 October 2015 – Information Systems third year student, Lin Baoyu, and fourth year students, Lee Yuan Guang, Loi Liang Yang and Jason Sim Meng Kiat, collectively known as Team EnthuSIAst, won the inaugural Singapore Airlines (SIA) App Challenge that was held between 3 to 10 October 2015.
In addition to winning first prize and a fully sponsored trip to Silicon Valley, the team also won the Mastercard Pay & Fly Challenge, for which they received a $1,000 prepaid cash-card each. “We are proud to represent National University of Singapore (NUS) to win the award and the journey here has been a wonderful one for all of us,” said Jason Sim, who spoke on behalf of the team.
Through this competition, which was themed ‘Your Travel, Your Way’, SIA sought innovative ideas on enhancing travel experience with technology. The participants were asked to build applications that would address the real-world business challenges presented.
Team EnthuSIAst decided to focus on improving customers’ in-flight experience because they believe that is when customers are most ‘idle’ and have the most contact with SIA. Describing their prototype, Jason said, “The app consists of inflight ordering, purchasing and messaging systems with the former two systems tagged to the inflight dashboard of the flight attendant. It allows passengers to order and make purchases with the ease of their mobile phones and thus, for the flight attendants to serve them with improved efficiency and accuracy. Through the messaging system, passengers will be able to communicate with one another and share information or even make friends!”