Introducing the new Babee on Board, a new app that is designed to help pregnant commuters to find a seat on public transport has recently been launched in the UK on Monday. The new app consists of two companion apps that communicate via Bluetooth.
The app works by sending a notification to the other commuters telling them, "There might be a pregnant person near you who needs a seat." The app that is containing the alert button costs £3.99, which then will be donated to the Project Healthy Children Charity.
It works underground and doesn't need commuters to have a signal on their smartphones. App developers decided to put a price on the app to avoid being used by pranksters.
The app Babee on Board was developed by a London-based company named 10X by Hew Leith, company's CEO, out of guilt when he failed to give a pregnant woman his seat because he was busy on his phone. While the app itself has c fee, the version for receiving requests only is available for free.
Leith said, "We would rather give it away for free but we need to ensure there's a barrier so people don't download it for free and troll those around them. We are donating 100% of the profits to charity."
In addition, the two apps will work like walkie-talkies, said Leith. The app will need the phone's Bluetooth location services and notifications need to be switched on. The app also is currently available only for Apple devices as of the moment.
Furthermore, 10X is also looking forward to partner with large companies such as Apple, Google, Citymapper, and Uber. It wishes that alerts could be sent through their apps, and bypassing the need for everyone to download the Babee on Board: Offer a Seat app.
However, there will be a few drawbacks to the app. First, it can only send notifications to phones that already have the app installed. Second, if a pregnant woman needs a seat and uses the app, but nobody else around doesn't have it, it won't do anything. And lastly, the app relies on Bluetooth for communications, a feature that most users usually disable by default due to its heavy battery demands.
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