I´m both excited and quite apprehensive about it being only one week left of the degree project. It´s been a very challenging phase, and it feels like some kind of victory to have come through it all; three major presentations, simplifying the sea of information, making sense of it, and finetuning it all together into a communication piece.
In a way the project is so much more about sociological and ethical aspects of life, but I believe design is one of the most powerful tools to conduct dialogues in these areas.
For different reasons I´ve hesitated to post the actual design in the blog, but I feel confident that I will publish the final video online when it is ready to go. I am cranking out the last pieces of the different videos, and indeed it may have been overambitious to tell the story in three European capitals but this too, with it´s reasons. I am almost breathing out again. The race is soon over.
Updates coming at the end of this week. Time to film part two from Norway.
The storyboard can be found in the following 29 days before examination presentation . Wish me luck!
The building of a design service relies heavily on a continuous dialogue between designer and user(s). There are in fact two user ends if you want in this service, first of all the front end user: those who subscribers to the service, agents that want to make the city safer and help. Secondly, there are the back end users, namely the police and the city council, who send out information, and act upon the information feed that is given to them with its variable necessities of priorities.
Today’s talk with Inga Lena, chief of investiagations pointed me mostly to confirmation that I´ve undertaken appropriate decisions but also a few matters that could be reconsidered. Some things also remain speculative. The meeting was somewhat abrupt because she had a lot on her schedual but we could touch base on the foundation of the platform. We agreed upon many things:
- Turn on/off is top priority.
- It makes sense to categorize the crime alerts options in three: high alerts, theft/burglary, and traffic. These are subcategorized accordingly, and there might be an option to turn them all on with a single click.
- Users may see how many have received the same alert, but perhaps, when there is above 5 users, there shouldn’t be a need to specify how many, other than a number above 5. If you could see that 12 individuals received the alert, you might be discouraged from believing you can affect/inform/help.
- Importantly, the police finds it valuable to be able to overlay maps of reports from people about conditions that connect with the crime.
She proposed a few things I had not considered:
The central that receives the emergency calls are also the ones who should filter information coming in from citizens who want to help, and should then accordingly send this out towards the patrols that have engaged in the situation. I thought it would be feasible that what users submit of valuable information could be sent directly to a screen the police would have on their dashboard. Objections for it to be like this is the fact that there might be a suspect in the backseat, and witnesses need to be protected and not reveal themselves to others than the police itself. It was also mentioned that multiple information channels might be counterintuitive and overwhelming. Release only what’s absolute relevant.
Proposed solutions would be the police seeing the same map as the users would see, but in large scale. In this scenario the police will see that others have been informed and indicated a will to help. They can opt to have these users visible on the map; and whenever there is useful input about witnessing help, this media may populate onto the map and its nearabout position (where the user was when sharing some information, video, photo, comment or sound). Give indications that there might be help.
Essentially, the police owns this information, they are the ones to consider the validity of the content. No doubt, the more users nearby, the more nonsensical material may find its way through, but they would have a powerful forum for getting help by people that are in those areas. Because the submission process is digital and able to occur very fast and in the right time, the police will be able to have a more detailed archive of witness information. Users themselves choose if they can be contacted – called or texted to ask for more help.
I talked with a few front end users the last days and many interesting tweaks have been suggested. Today’s user test taught me the following:
1. So after I photograph the damage, I select the category, and a mail letter appears with the image and category inside it. As I proceed with filling out metadata, this information visually updates inside the letter; indications of what I’m adding to it in its entirety. This sounded really nice, but I’m worried real estate may challenge the fidelity in which the information may be shown with such compressed real estate. It is definitely a metaphor that enhances interaction understanding and makes the reporting case playful.
2. There is in fact a consideration to be made to users that have phones without gps capabilities; would there be a way for them too to submit reports about damage. For this to be feasible, for example for lights, each individual light would require a tagged number to identify location. As such, the process could be really simple, spell in the tag identifier, send the sms off. Receive an sms back with a username – your phone number and enter the website to add comments, and contact details. It may really be that simple.
Following the closure of mid-review, my focus has been on developing the architecture, getting visual and getting multiple points of view to understand the flow of interaction, the necessities and the precautions. This regards of course both physical damages and crime alerts.
To start off, I´ve had some intial conversations about ´reporting damage´with Nina from Umeå kommun, and a few other users (who really would use such a platform), and iterated parallel to the feedback given. To quote a comment by Nina, the system needs to be simple enough but flexible in its use.
Some important requests and considerations have been the following:
Context-AdaptiveGive the user options on how to locate and mark where the damage is.
It might be so, that someone does not want to locate a scar by taking a photo (situational relativity, fear, obstruction, impracticalities), and as such may want to mark the location manually, actually through a grid. This is specially the case if the gps is turned off, but that assumes you know the area well enough and have an offline map stored.
Give the user options to input feedback with a delay, if their situation does not optimize it immediately.
If it is Freezing cold or you are in dense traffic, or if you are on your way to an appointment, or in any way hindered to add details about a damage you should be able to have an intermittent procedure. You should be able to mark a place, close the application, and specify category and other options when you are at a convenient sitatuation to do so. You should in fact be able to report a damage, even if you did not even open your app in the location where you found it. Although, creating an digital evidence of location will help be specific, and remember at best the exact space where this was found.
Pro-Co-CreateGive the user the option to build on when someone already reported the same problem.
If there are existing reports from the same artifact/thing/road/scene, and you see this before reporting, you might hesitate to add more media. Don´t facilitate redundancy of information, but encourage supporting existing reports; not only the ones in the area where you are but any point/marker on the map. This would be a very interesting perspective, as nested in a marked point you would have others commenting/confirming “fix this”. In the larger picture, people can contribute a lot by recollections and flexibility on when to mark a problem (disregardless of being there or not). The obstacle or larger challenge with this is not allowing for some users to dramatize an entire map because they can (so easily). The authorities can – based on this, consider necessity clusters and prioritize. In any case, this is actually how the light map of Umeå actually works. You don´t have to be there to mark it. But being there removes any recollection flaws of place.
ResponsiveAllow the user to tell why and how that problem actually made them feel.
This is another crucial point as to why it should be prioritized. Adding qualitative data gives a more human aspect to the mapping, as well as allowing clarifications. Let the city council get back to the people who actually reported (and inclined for being contacted).
Make the user feel and understand that the matter is being looked at.
It may take a longer period of time to actually do something about the issue reported, but give the user a sense of dialogue and involvement on followups of reports the user creates. These phases seem to exist: reporting, receiving, looking at, considering, [closed as fixed], and [closed as unfixable].
To be updated.
A light narrative about how communal reports are received and how they can be responded too. Many thanks to Nina for her time and openness.
The workshops at UID have given some solid insights that have recurred in various conversations. In short they are the following:
Nobody wants to be overwhemed. If a service would alarm me about an emergency-like event nearby it should be for either: asking me to help (specific observations) or inform me for my own safety and protection.
In situations where there are robberies, and perhaps less likely violence there is somewhat of a relative interest in helping. First of all, an assumption that guns are involved, repels draw to the place, and potential help involvement is on a distance observation level. Looking out from a window is feasible, you are safe enough. Intervening in any ways seems like a radical act, according to the groups conversations.
In assaults, the interest is on helping the victim if possible, but if given some visual cues as to the details and seriousness of the situation, self preservation stands highest. You would help, if you did not risk your own danger. If the incidents happen on places where assumedly large crowds already exist or a certain time has passed( 15 min), you would assume someone would have done something. If you know people in the area where you are alerted you obviously want to help in some way. One participant said he knew someone at the place of the incident (ICA) and he would be bound to head to the place.
In any case, witness observation is something the participants were willing to do, if they are told specifically how to help (car details, what´s the description of the aggressor, where were they last seen?). Interestingly too, frequence of happenings will affect care. If a kidnap is something that occurs very often you would maybe not care as much as a smaller city where it is rare. You would keep an eye out. You´d be one of the first to know.
It is essential to be able to filter the information you get, and you would most likely only want it in areas that personally affect you, where you work, where you live, where close ones live. You want to easily turn it off, if it´s in your way or the information is too heavy. You only want to receive alerts in timespans appropriate to you, without disturbing your everyday routine (time with family, work meetings).
Next week we share our Mid Review presentation; Posts will follow from there.
Meanwhile I wanted to share what has inspired me the most lately:
There was recently an interesting article about the development of this Fire Department App in Techcrunch. Thank you Willi!