Junk or Treasure
It's yard sale season in Colorado, when one man's junk is another man's treasure. Summer brings the colorful neon handwritten signs of the weekend yard sales where people invite strangers to rummage through their belongings on the front lawn. Asked what they're looking for, responses range from vague and obscure to generally specific. A bargain hunter might respond, "I'm not sure but I'll know it when I see it". Others give a shopping list: "couch, blender, toaster". Still others narrate a morning routine: "I've been looking for a recliner where I can drink my smoothie and enjoy a toasted bagel in my breakfast nook." Got it. Let the haggling begin.
Maybe the seller and buyer reach an agreement: my cash for your extra. Except, when it comes to temporary use items like your assigned airplane seat or your arena seat at a performance, there is an alternative: my item (seat) for your item (seat). Is this be bartering? Not really, because in this exchange scenario I don't own anything and neither do you. You use my assigned seat and I use yours only for the duration of the event. Neither of us own those seats. We don't take them home (unless they were souvenir seats of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). We're talking about temporary use for the duration of the event.
_(Stadium_crop).jpg)
We started Hopscotch Solutions on the idea of merging the above concepts and using models from Game theory. We used the Simultaneous Game in which both players make their moves at the same time by indicating a preference of seating. Our job was to find suitable exchanges of seats between passengers. As we studied the problem, we found seat exchanges between passengers becomes a Prisoner's Dilemma with a Faustian Bargain. This 50's classic gaming problem involves cooperation and betrayal between two passenger-prisoners against an airline seat warden. There are other game elements we used.
We considered how to implement several exchange strategies, as shown above in the Venn diagram of "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Strategies" from WikiMedia. Strategies include tit-for-tat (aka mimicry of the other player), dominated (aka concession for mutual benefit) and dominant (aka winner take all). We created models of relative valuation against a baseline and calculated a points-based incentive model of disparity. The models had to account for and incentivize the cooperation to avoid the uncooperative Nash Equilibrium. Our system uses applied mathematics from Linear Algebra, including vectors and matrices, to create seat models and prototypes, user preference models and prototypes, valuation models, and incentive models. If you're familiar with stock brokerage terms, they use the term "like-for-kind" to denote when the seller places a sell and buy order of the same stock, to transfer it another trading desk, on the same stock exchange.
Next, we asked questions about how to develop and deploy a direct-match system from one person to another. What were passenger criteria? How do we calculate or identify the buyer and the seller? Could we expand the concept and create a self-contained computerized model to implement strategies? Could we help reseat attendees of any public event? How about concert-goers exchanging seats at an arena? Sports fans exchanging seats at a stadium?
Hopscotch accepted the reseating challenge in 2016. Our invention addressed a conundrum: how can we passengers exchange seats on a full flight without unsold seat inventory and improve the airline experience? Full and high load factor flights could offer to search and find a direct exchange of assigned seats once you reach the departure gate. It means the people at the gate on the same flight with assigned seats can tell us what they want or are willing to do. We can auto-identify your personalized reciprocal matches for both passengers (you and another person).
It takes two to Tango. Someone has to want to sit in your seat as much as you want to sit in theirs as a Zero Sum Game. This is not double-booking the same seat, as airlines have smoothly dubbed "spillage". This is not price shifting unsold seat inventory. The list grows longer every day of what this is not, because of what the industry as conditioned you to expect (i.e. not getting what you want).
The solution, we think, is we let one person with one assigned seat agree of their own volition (will) to sit in your seat simultaneously meaning you consent (voluntarily) to sit in their seat. You can thank one another once aboard or just go on about your trip. Thus began a harder problem of explaining the concept to friends, family, neighbors, and air travelers willing to listen. What we thought was self-evident and mutually beneficial turned out to be an outrageous concept for passengers and airlines alike.
A two-sided direct transaction between passengers? Was this such a novel idea? We found that, yes, it is new. We refined the explanation as we progressed. People had to be continually reminded of the reciprocal nature of such an exchange. The other person had to desire your seat to some degree, unless incentives smoothed the way to cooperation.
This lead to internal Hopscotch discussions of imbalanced valuation, inexact matches, and deferred compensation. Just as with the vague and the specific yard sale shoppers: you may have a favored location where you want to sit, a vague idea of where you do not want to sit, or you may just want to be closer to something like the lavatory or the entrance/exit. Everyone has an opinion and they are diverse as to what they would do for how much or little, or even free.
Maybe the seller and buyer reach an agreement: my cash for your extra. Except, when it comes to temporary use items like your assigned airplane seat or your arena seat at a performance, there is an alternative: my item (seat) for your item (seat). Is this be bartering? Not really, because in this exchange scenario I don't own anything and neither do you. You use my assigned seat and I use yours only for the duration of the event. Neither of us own those seats. We don't take them home (unless they were souvenir seats of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). We're talking about temporary use for the duration of the event.
We started Hopscotch Solutions on the idea of merging the above concepts and using models from Game theory. We used the Simultaneous Game in which both players make their moves at the same time by indicating a preference of seating. Our job was to find suitable exchanges of seats between passengers. As we studied the problem, we found seat exchanges between passengers becomes a Prisoner's Dilemma with a Faustian Bargain. This 50's classic gaming problem involves cooperation and betrayal between two passenger-prisoners against an airline seat warden. There are other game elements we used.
We considered how to implement several exchange strategies, as shown above in the Venn diagram of "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Strategies" from WikiMedia. Strategies include tit-for-tat (aka mimicry of the other player), dominated (aka concession for mutual benefit) and dominant (aka winner take all). We created models of relative valuation against a baseline and calculated a points-based incentive model of disparity. The models had to account for and incentivize the cooperation to avoid the uncooperative Nash Equilibrium. Our system uses applied mathematics from Linear Algebra, including vectors and matrices, to create seat models and prototypes, user preference models and prototypes, valuation models, and incentive models. If you're familiar with stock brokerage terms, they use the term "like-for-kind" to denote when the seller places a sell and buy order of the same stock, to transfer it another trading desk, on the same stock exchange.
Next, we asked questions about how to develop and deploy a direct-match system from one person to another. What were passenger criteria? How do we calculate or identify the buyer and the seller? Could we expand the concept and create a self-contained computerized model to implement strategies? Could we help reseat attendees of any public event? How about concert-goers exchanging seats at an arena? Sports fans exchanging seats at a stadium?
Hopscotch accepted the reseating challenge in 2016. Our invention addressed a conundrum: how can we passengers exchange seats on a full flight without unsold seat inventory and improve the airline experience? Full and high load factor flights could offer to search and find a direct exchange of assigned seats once you reach the departure gate. It means the people at the gate on the same flight with assigned seats can tell us what they want or are willing to do. We can auto-identify your personalized reciprocal matches for both passengers (you and another person).
It takes two to Tango. Someone has to want to sit in your seat as much as you want to sit in theirs as a Zero Sum Game. This is not double-booking the same seat, as airlines have smoothly dubbed "spillage". This is not price shifting unsold seat inventory. The list grows longer every day of what this is not, because of what the industry as conditioned you to expect (i.e. not getting what you want).
The solution, we think, is we let one person with one assigned seat agree of their own volition (will) to sit in your seat simultaneously meaning you consent (voluntarily) to sit in their seat. You can thank one another once aboard or just go on about your trip. Thus began a harder problem of explaining the concept to friends, family, neighbors, and air travelers willing to listen. What we thought was self-evident and mutually beneficial turned out to be an outrageous concept for passengers and airlines alike.
A two-sided direct transaction between passengers? Was this such a novel idea? We found that, yes, it is new. We refined the explanation as we progressed. People had to be continually reminded of the reciprocal nature of such an exchange. The other person had to desire your seat to some degree, unless incentives smoothed the way to cooperation.
This lead to internal Hopscotch discussions of imbalanced valuation, inexact matches, and deferred compensation. Just as with the vague and the specific yard sale shoppers: you may have a favored location where you want to sit, a vague idea of where you do not want to sit, or you may just want to be closer to something like the lavatory or the entrance/exit. Everyone has an opinion and they are diverse as to what they would do for how much or little, or even free.
Comments
Post a Comment