CHIRP
an EXPERIMENTAL CONCEPT project
CLIENT
N / A, fictional project
TEAM
Four UX Designers
MY ROLE
Rapid Prototyping, UI and Asset library creation
YEAR
2021
"How might we help women in abusive domestic relationships to become empowered enough to seek help and leave?”
Brief, scope and initial questions
Chirp is a CONCEPT product; this entire project had the purpose of having us open our eyes to the possibilities of future, exponential technology in a field that would make a difference to the world. As a team, we took on perhaps one of the more complicated and ethically challenging UN goals: "Goal 5, Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls". From this, we narrowed the scope to one key area, domestic violence in Sweden during the Covid 19 pandemic.
Because of this loaded question, this instantly became important to the entire team, but it left us with so many problems (completely disregarding ethical concerns, past trauma and risks just to mention a few):
How do we ensure that the one we're trying to help doesn't get caught and get into even more trouble as a consequence?
How can we enable this to be a viable solution concerning privacy laws (e.g. GDPR) in place to prevent secret recordings, storage of personal data etc?
What would be the right way to go to ensure that it is as simple, discreet and intuitive as possible? But most importantly;
How can we ensure that the user don't feel like they're alone and at increased risk?
Research
When approaching this project, we had a clear goal in mind: To make a difference. We were given two conditions to do this on;
1) The product should take advantage of exponential technology that is either not invented yet, or that we think will become a reality within the foreseeable future.
2) Create a solution for one of the UN goals.
To get the information that we needed, data was gathered from a plethora of newspapers, testimonials from people who know someone in this position, and taking part in the national statistics of Sweden as a whole in recent times - before and during the pandemic alike.
“In 2019, there were approximately 22 300 sexual oriented crimes registered in Sweden, 95% targeted women”
- nck.uu.se
“Tech is a unfortunately a double-edged sword when it comes to domestic violence victims.”
- weired.com
Design Approach
Creating something that would fit our use-case scenario is of the essence that the application is easy to use. It also has to be autonomous, inconspicuous, and connected to the smart devices within the household without getting noticed. With this in mind, we started to scatter the web and conducted several brainstorming sessions for how this could be created.
Shortly after the design search process started, it became evident to the team that this technology - much as the previously conducted research has stated - is very much indeed a double-edged sword. What happens if this data comes into the wrong hands? How is it legal to record people and share them with parties of interest without the person’s consent (i.e. the abuser)? How can it be present without the need to purchase yet another IoT device, and what happens if you’ve left your phone in a different room? The numbers kept piling up, and we quickly realised that this became a lot harder than we first anticipated.
That being said, the team felt passionate about the project, and we were all confident that this was something that really could make a significant difference; it was correctly executed. To make it intuitive enough, we looked around for inspiration. We immediately agreed on the Swedish money transfer service “Swish” for inspiration since it is quick, simple and once you’ve used it, you know everything you need to know. From there, sketches were created every minute until we were in the position of having a concept that made sense to us.
Design Solutions
As mentioned, the design solution evolved from a paper lo-fi sketching phase involving a plethora of sketches and low-fidelity prototypes consisting of essentially grey boxes and placeholders. From this, the purpose, pitfalls and opportunities of each element were examined to ensure that there was nothing in the prototype that could be considered redundant. Additionally, a light and dark mode version of the solution was also created that quickly became the team favourite, transforming every element of every screen - including the logo to match with a consistent design.
The design system was built in Figma, based on the sketches that were created during briefings and brainstorming sessions via the team Miro board. As a lead designer and an apprentice started on designing, the rest of the team continued with the research, as well as the presentation outline of things. In the end, by using this method of parallel work, the team could systematically cover all the areas required with high efficiency.
Outcome
The result of this project resulted in a high-fidelity fully prototyped product that was praised by our industry leader. This prototype was presented through a live walkthrough, a slow yet hard-hitting pitch video as well as a promotion for the “product” that affected everyone at the conference call. Since then, I have been in touch with other UX designers who are more oriented into the storytelling aspects and pitching and they have asked if this has been launched at any capacity. Reason being that they’ve expressed their interest in investing in it since it should‘ve been a thing already - which just goes to show that we’ve created was a polished, relevant and much needed product.
The ambition, keep in simple and straight to the point. In order to achieve the goal of a product that is easy to use while still serving it’s purpose, a less is more mentality was put in place. Throughout the conceptualisation stages there was this balance of what is necessary, how can it be visualised and what is too little?
Discreet yet right at your fingertips. To function as intended, it also needed to be as accessible as possible, this is why we created several possible ways of getting into the app or activating its functionalities. The complicated part however was to make it inconspicuous enough to not draw any unwanted attention to itself.
To provide support was one of the key visions that the team had going into this project, while not everyone is able to search for data or information due to a controlling environment, having it ready on-device reacting to the input and thoughts the user feeds it, could very well create what is needed to take the first step towards the better.
“This is a very clean, professional-looking prototype that tackles a very complex topic, the pitch video made me stop and think. The product you’ve created looks really professional, polished and real-world ready. Great job!”
- Cyrus Clarke, Module Industry Leader
Sensitive and controversial
Even though the project after much elaboration and modification ended a satisfactory end result, the path there was not as straight as this post may have hade it out to be. To some this was a passion project while others were concerned of the legal aspects of one of its’ core functionalities. Where does the line go? Is invading personal privacy by recording unaware civillians for a greater purpose of gathering evidence to use in court something that is acceptable - especially post GDPR? What would happen if the person who this is used against would discover it and get their hands on it and all the information gathered? What would that mean for the person using it? Would this instead of helping become a ticking time bomb in terms of outcome? As you can see this is a complicated topic, which is why it fits as a conceptual project. Not the most polished work I’ve done, but by far the most interesting!
My Takeaways
My personal takeaways from this project is that, even though I already know that nothing is black and while, there are many different shades of what is right and what is wrong. Even though something might seem simple in the beginning with what is acceptable and what isn’t - when starting to create a solution to fix problem A - other downfalls and risks may occur that in turn questions the innocence and legality of a at first glance to some obvious solution. Because of conflicts within the team working with this, I took a strict design orientated position while serving as the conflict manager within the team, which was highly needed. People will always be people, this is why I got into psychology in the first place, and while some topics may be more sensitive and closer to some hearts than others. This is why it is important to understand other perspectives of the same issue. Regardless, I’m happy of how it turned out everything considered and I have since worked with it on my own taking the concept further.