Smart City Vigilance — Design Thinking Our Way to a Smart City Safety Device
This Medium story is a response to an assignment set on my MSc SmartEdTech, co-creativity, and digital tools for educational innovation.
The context, brief and case study can also be found on Medium, authored by Jorge Sanabria
In the context of the 4th industrial revolution certain drivers and megatrends have been identified grouped into 3 themes of physical, biological and digital. The Physical includes things such as driverless cars and robotics; digital refers to specifically the internet of things (IOT) — this phrase describes the relationship between people and ‘things’ or products, services etc that are now linked through technology and web or app platforms. The biological realm is clearly linked to humans and genetic sequencing, or even engineering has been identified. Within the context of these megatrends, the World Economic Forum (2015) has identified 21 tipping points, which are particular moments when mainstream society takes up these technological shifts.
In a design brief presented as part of a master’s programme in SmartEdTech, these tipping points are used as a way to develop a solution. The brief being:
The government of Jalisco has hired you to develop a wearable device, aimed at 18 to 23 y/o citizens of Guadalajara’s future as a Smart City, in order to foster trust and safety among the members of the community
Guadalajara was chosen due to its digital creative city vision Digital Creative City. What is interesting particularly in Guadalajara’s case is the seemingly paradoxical sense of futuristic development on the one hand and yet the seemingly dystopian nature of crime that exists there.
To return to the tipping points: From the 21 it was necessary to identify those which connect to the design brief. Within the tipping points, both positive and negative impacts are identified.
For this particular design brief the tipping points 4, 8 and 10 were identified — wearable internet, the internet of things and smart cities, respectively.
Each of the chosen tipping points had one negative impact in common, and one which was especially concerned with our brief: privacy/surveillance.
As with any wearable and connected device, the theme of privacy is extremely important, this will be even more so in the concept of smart cities. It would need to be assured that the data was only used in direct connection to the specific device and issue the device was trying to solve, and that the user’s data was not misappropriated in any way, or used by the authorities for anything other than the designated system.
However, there are a range of positive impacts related to the proposal. Here again, each of the tipping points chosen had overlaps, with improved quality of life, increased efficiency in using resources and lower cost of delivering services. Furthermore, tipping point 4’s positive impact is a decrease in missing children; Tipping point 8, digital twin providing precise data for monitoring and social processes and Tipping point 10, decreased crime.
As can be seen, there are various positive impacts depending on the tipping point, but all shifts are concerned with the negative impact of data security and privacy.
This is an interesting point to be aware of due to the Mexican government’s recent changes on privacy laws.
With the background set, it is time to think more deeply about the design brief. The tipping points were chosen based on their perceived relevance to the brief: a wearable device needs to be designed (4) this will be connected to the internet (8) which will in turn have the data/information used by the city of Guadalajara to improve their city.
As this is a design brief, the concept of design thinking is used to develop the deliverable. IDEO’s design kit was used to offer the source of design thinking development.
In the design thinking concept the stages of empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing, correspond to the IDEO design kit resources of inspiration, ideation and implementation. In order to fulfil the brief, certain tools from the toolbox have been selected:
INSPIRATION
These were chosen as they are useful tools within this design brief context. Both the Frame Your Design Challenge worksheet (FYDC) and Ecosystem Mapping worksheet within the Define Your Audience tool, are useful to get to know the context within which the final design will be implemented. Furthermore, Expert Interview was chosen as it was felt that the brief was very context-specific, and expert advice would help to keep on-task.
IDEATION
The ideation phase is about generating ideas. The three tools Share Inspiring Stories, Find themes, and Brainstorm rules were all chosen for the great ways they can help to inspire, as well as being very team-oriented tools — fostering openness through sharing of the best ideas which then help to organise the ideas to find emerging themes.
IMPLEMENTATION
Finally, for the implementation stage Roadmap for success, Create a Pitch, Explore Scalability, and Keep Getting Feedback, were all chosen based on the merits of the tools to help with getting a product launched, to keep to task on the project timeline, as well as the opportunity to improve the product in the future.
So this is the background to the design brief and below are details of the final design proposal that is to be delivered to the city of Guadalajara.
Wearable device: a smart contact lens for 18–23 year-olds in the smart city of Guadalajara.
Within the group of 18–23-year-olds we particularly defined domestic abuse as a serious issue in Mexico. It is a long and complex procedure to report cases and does not guarantee justice. Furthermore, Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC)website the following corroborates that
‘Reporting crimes can be a long, frustrating experience. Victims must make a complaint (denuncia) to police or the local branch of the State Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Publico). When making a denuncia, the burden of proof is on the individual to substantiate that a crime occurred. Even after filing a denuncia properly, the complainant must ratify it several days later.’
Thus, it was felt that the contact lens would be able to help with this issue.
Below are further specifications of how the smart contact lens can respond to the tipping points and context of the brief and a smart city.
Wearable Internet: GPS Kidnappings. Recording: Assaults
The Internet of and for Things. Voice recognition: Safe words. Domestic abuse
Send recording: Police, Firemen, 911 (Smart cities) Domestic abuse, government supplies this tech to the victim investigation
So finally a personal reflection on the whole process:
Through this case study several things were learnt, both personal and theoretical. For the theoretical side I developed further understanding, knowledge and practical implementation of design thinking, particularly through the brilliant IDEO toolkit. Within my professional role, I am well aware of the ‘megatrends’ in education and pedagogy, especially those linked with 21st century skills as well as those also identified by the World Economic Forum in its future of jobs report (2015), therefore it was very interesting to see similar concepts but for general society and particularly technology, which is another link in my professional role with digital education technology. This was very interesting. It was great to have the chance to discover further another country and culture (albeit digitally/remotely). I only had a glancing knowledge of Mexico before this study, and it was great to be able to do some more involved research into the crime statistics and to learn about the forward-looking projects that also exist in the country.
References
Schwab, K. (2017). The fourth industrial revolution. Crown Business.
World Economic Forum. (2015). Deep Shift Technology Tipping Points
and Societal Impact. World Economic Forum. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC15_Technological_Tipping_Points_report_2015.pdf
