I've only traveled on an actual ship twice in my life, but I remember the boarding process being a lot more complicated than throwing your rollie into an overhead bin and wiggling into 24-B. Once onboard the ship, I had to navigate multiple elevators, corridors and a stairway to get to the only berth I could afford, a shared room in steerage deep inside the ship's bowels.

This Electronic Ticket concept, by the five-person team of Bao Haimo, Piao Hailong, Liu Yuancheng, Hu Xiameng and Qiao Song, is designed to simplify the boarding issues particular to ship travel:

The Electronic Ticket can be recycled just like a subway ticket. The ticket is set with relative information when sold. It is checked when the passenger boards the ship and disembarks. The information is cleared after recovering the ticket so that it can be recycled. This also allows the ship's management to keep track of all passengers and ensure the safe disembarkation of all. The ticket contains an advanced light sensor module, which can modify the brightness of the screen according to the environment. This enables the passenger to read the ticket easily, even in the dark.

This ticket may speed up the passenger's search for particular functional regions of the ship. When the number on the lower right corner is touched, the plan of the corresponding floor is shown on the display. The main functional regions are clearly marked. The square red key at the lower right corner provides different functions with different tapping sequences. The position of the passenger's room, bathrooms, and the escape route are displayed. The "read urgent key" is especially useful when danger threatens. It would provide the passenger with an escape route.

This concept isn't new—it was a Red Dot winner in the Interaction & Communication category from last year—but I like the concept and think it has way more applicability than it's intended for. Something like this would be helpful for air travel, particularly when you've got a transfer at one of those airports where everything seems seven miles apart (Dallas-Fort Worth, anyone?) and you want to know how many Cinnabons it will take you to reach your gate.

What would be really cool is if this was just software that could be digitally embedded in your phone or a credit card designed to double as a display, turning either of those things into your multimedia itinerary for the entire trip.