Smart City Vigilance — how to improve safety in a city with a connected wristband?

This story on Medium was written as part of a Master’s assignment. It answers the case study described here: https://sanabria-z.medium.com/smart-city-vigilance-833c8aae9efd

Context

The case study aims to highlight the 4th Industrial Revolution, some of whose drivers and megatrends have been identified and grouped into three themes: physical, biological and digital.

In the context of these megatrends, particular moments where our society adopts technological changes were identified at the World Economic Forum (2015).
21 tipping points were thus defined, you can find them by following this link: https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC15_Technological_Tipping_Points_report_2015.pdf

Through a group activity, we were in charge of conducting a reflection on the following issue:

The government of Jalisco has hired you to develop a wearable device, aimed at citizens between the ages of 18 and 23 in the future smart city of Guadalajara, to foster trust and security among community members.

Our proposal to improve security

Our proposal is based on the following tipping points:

p.9: 80% of people with a digital presence on the internet
p.11: 10% of people wearing clothes connected to the internet
p.12: 90% of the population with regular access to the Internet
p.16: 1 trillion sensors connected to the internet

We have indeed identified a strong link between these tipping points, they all seem to converge naturally towards the Internet of Things by allowing its growing accessibility.

Like any technology, it can be accompanied by less than virtuous uses, particularly in terms of personal data preservation.
It is important to ensure that only the strictly necessary personal data is used through the use of these connected objects and, above all, to inform the user about these ethical aspects.

IDEO’s design kit was used to provide the necessary development tools for the different phases of design thinking: inspiration, ideation and implementation

Inspiration step

The differents tools we wanted to use was the “interview”, the “expert interview”, in order to assess the real life application of the prototype and
the “align your impact goals” methods.

Indeed, in order to respond to a need in a satisfactory way is to identify the expectations of users.
They will indeed provide the determining data to conduct the design phase.

According to IDEO, as a research tool, interviews are the epicenter of the inspiration phase. Human-centered design is about getting to know the people you are designing for and listening to them in their own words.

In particular, I would adopt one of the recommended methods known as “Five Whys.” This is a simple and effective research method for determining the personal and emotional roots of a problem. This is done by developing five “Why” questions during an interview.
Since part of the initiative is to promote local talent, the people of Guadalajara should be the focus of the interview to understand their creative needs. This could be used to determine what technologies they lack, what technologies are available, and how they can be used to meet their needs and foster innovation.

Ideation step

For this step, the “get feedback” , “integrate and iterate feedback” and “create a framework” tools seemed relevant to us in order to take into account the user experience and thus improve our product. It is indeed an essential step to collect authentic and honest feedback in order to give birth to a truly satisfying product.

Implementation step

This implementation phase is crucial and will allow us to really validate our project.
We have chosen the tools:”life prototyping”, “getting feedback” and “pilot”.
Indeed, by basing ourselves on tangible indicators based on use in real conditions, we will be able to constantly improve our product through an iterative process

Description of our portable device, including its functions and benefits according to the requirements of the Government of Jalisco

a connected wristband that allows you to alert your loved ones in case of aggression

These connected wristbands would allow a person in danger to warn their loved ones so that they can come to their aid or call the police.
How would this wristband work?
Very simply, you just have to click once on it to warn that you have a problem. The wristband would be connected by bluetooth to the phone of the person wearing it. When the wearer of the wristband presses on it because he/she feels insecure, a pre-recorded SMS and an automatic call would be sent to selected contacts. These contacts would then have access to the exact GPS location of the victim.
How to be located in a covered space like a building?
In order to be able to indicate a position in a space where GPS technology cannot be used (in a building for example), we propose the locations of the city of beacons, so the wristband can detect them and thus define its position.
What if I don’t have a cell phone?
If you don’t have a cell phone, the wristband would also be equipped with Lora connectivity in order to transmit its position via a LoraWan gateway (paid service).
How to delay/discourage the assailants?
A siren integrated in the wristband would be activated to try to repel the attackers

Smart ring that works as an extremely loud siren — to avoid any accidental trigger (to avoid dangerous buttons or passwords that could be triggered by plain wearing), the siren could only be started by the owner’s fingerprint (just as touch ID on iPhones). If the owner appears to be in danger, it can start a loud siren (130 dB) that will distract the attacker and call attention of others. Also, as the only trigger would be a fingerprint, starting the siren would be discrete and hardly noticeable for the criminal. At the same time, the siren would send a notification to an emergency contact together with the GPS coordinates of the victim. There would also be an anonymous platform for citizens of Guadalajara with all locations available so that others/police could see where it’s currently dangerous to go and act upon this finding. Access to the platform would only be possible to citizens with a proven stable address and the local authorities. However, the locations would under no circumstances be linked to real identities (using the same location-sharing systems as various European anti-covid apps)

My learnings

This case study was enriching for my personal practice, indeed, as a technology teacher, the process of designing an object is part of the foundations of my teaching approach.

Through the deepening of the various methods of design thinking, I was able to deepen my knowledge.

The ideo.org website is a precious tip that I will keep.

It also allowed me to propose this type of activity to my students. They modeled a prototype of a connected object to answer this need.

To do this, a micro:bit programmable card was used for the connected object part and an android application was “developed with the help of the app inventor website.

The interest of this website is that it allows to approach the programming of android applications in a simple way using a visual block-based programming tool.