FINAL POST
Participants: Julie Tams Bondgård, Katrine Kølln Molberg, Lise Maj Jørgensen & Maria Sand Christensen
Blogdocumentation of process: www.IxDowntown.tumblr.com
Concept video: http://youtu.be/MdnE8b4kdzI
Prototype presentation: http://youtu.be/xKA7CFi1EeY
Design Concept Note
Motivation
In today’s world the term privacy can be interpreted in many different ways. Private data can become very public with only the push of a button. The decreasing digital private sphere has led to an ethical discussion about how much public accessible data is too much. Digital data is being generated throughout our lives and even though we move on, the data stays put and accessible. When confronted with the data one can feel watched, but can you really describe it as being watched when you intentionally and publicly created the information?
The concept
Our concept is a provoking set-up consisting of 1) a private home (input data) and 2) the possibility for any people to access all information available on the internet about the people living in the specific house (output data). We have conceptualized this access as a smartphone application.
The application makes it possible to “scan” a house that you walk by and then see a list of all the people living there.
When you open the app, you will see the address where you are located through a gps signal which changes as you move and the phone camera will open. When “pointing” the phone at a certain house in the street, the application will - by using a combination of pictures from Google Streetview and the current GPS location - recognize the house.
When the recognition is done, the user will see a list of the people living in the house. It is now possible to click on a member and access all public information on the internet about him or her.
Process
In the inquiry phase of our design process we had a divergent approach to the possibilities of design opportunities with buildings and mobile devices by generating ideas through brainstorming. We worked from a user-centred perspective, but decided that user involvement would be difficult to plan within the 24 hours. When deciding on working with private homes and the data from a private home, we became more convergent in our approach and moved towards the exploration phase of the process. The exploration phase was primarily filled with research and data collection of personal information available online. This led us to the composition phase of the design process, which is the transition from using the methods and techniques of exploration, to get a more concrete idea or vision of our product design. We discussed the setup, input/output or the concept, interfaces and functions. When having a common vision of the concept we moved towards the assessment phase, where we sketched a wireframe from which we could create a prototype while having Normans design principles in mind. The visibility of the design was important for us. We wanted to create a simple design, with only a few functions, so the design would be transparent for the user. The user should be able to create an overview of the design and its operations and functions just by looking at the product. The app should be intuitive to use, and through affordances and constraints the design guides the user through the application. When opening the app, the camera and gps signal automatically start on the smartphone, the gps signal states the address you are located at and changes while you move. When turning the camera towards a building facade the application scans the building for information, and show you the ones living there and fade-out the building in the background to strengthen the visibility of buttons on the screen. Everything until this point happens automatically, and every time the user moves with the smartphone the interface change to give feedback to the user. From this point the user will be able to press on everything shown on the screen and simple connected actions will happen.