Brief: Design a way to track and trace human contact that builds trust
Members: Amber Lau, Tanvi Kulkarni, Felix Kirk, Nancy Obeid
Collaborative Partner: Tactical Technology Collective
Comments from Weekly Presentation
After showing the physical model and app prototype, our tutors thought we did some proper thinking in combing the physical model and digital part. The way we merge it makes the design not looking like ordinary track and trace application.
In terms of the technical part, they thought AI training wouldn’t be as complex as we thought because our design only contains 6 primary colours. But whether it is easy or not, we still have to try it out.
For the application, the image we are currently showing as the digital board is a 3D diagram, however this way of presenting data would caused visual confusion. Our tutor showed us an example of Apple doing their presentation with a 3D pie chart, the problem of that is the third largest category looks bigger than the second largest one. Therefore we should minimise these unnecessary errors.
For community platform (where people can search for recent case), it wasn’t user friendly enough at the moment. If user want to compare their data to recent case, they would have to go between the Search and My Board to compare. We have to reconsider the interface for better user experience.
As for the additional “Request for Test Kit” option that appears at the bottom of the Community Platform, our tutors thought it is a nice touch-up for people if they think they got infected. They also mentioned we don’t have to further develop this part as it belongs to another system design.
To further modify our design, we can start thinking of different use case then test how our system is going to response to that.
Modify Design
Since our physical map got approved, our team spent the rest of the week mainly modifying the application. To easily know what we need to work on, I set up a few guiding questions base on the feedbacks we received:
- How the digital board should look like after scanning?
- What is the more efficient way to edit content?
- How to compare information from Community Platform and My Board easily?
- What other use case can we think of when people use our design during COVID-19?
Revised Digital Board
As Tanvi has a background with product design, she helped us generate two versions of digital map. One is uses shadow as a cut off of each day, the second is a flat design, similar to original version. She also added wooden background and used lines to separate the days. We thought the latter one looks the closest to the physical map, so we decided to go with this one.
Edit Content Details
Since time, location and people are one of the most important information that we need to keep for contact tracing, we added an editing mode for people to fill in the location name, the number of companions, as well as their nicknames. Again, we are avoiding using GPS and Bluetooth connection, therefore people can put any nicknames that facilities their memory of the exact location.
Also, in case people forgot to add any pins on the physical map before scanning, we also added a “Add new activity” button for them to add activity they missed.
Compare Data
One of the changes we need to adjust is the way of showing infected cases. Our tutors thought placing a geographic map directly to the app doesn’t help people to compare their data. Therefore, we tried involving elements from the physical map and show the map in a circular form with small circles indicate as recent case.
To facilitate the process of comparing data, we added a “Compare your board” button to allow people to compare their data with the search result on the same screen. And if they think they have the potential of getting infected, they can also request test on the same page.
Bookmarked Place
To think about other use cases, one real case I thought of is the fact that I would like to know information outside my local community as well. I’m now staying in my home country, but I’m also studying overseas, if the COVID-19 situation is under control and I have to go back to continue my study, I would definitely want to check recent case of that particular community to make sure it is safe to go. There are also other cases where family members want to keep an eye on the situation on their grandparent’s local community as well.
With these cases, I suggested the team to add a “Bookmarked place” under community platform, so people can check places they are interested in whenever they want without needing to search every time. This function also allows them to view situations from different countries as well. It will particularly useful for businessman, overseas students, and even close family members who immigrated.
Share Data
Thinking of the case where infected people need to provide details of the past two weeks, we made a minor adjustment to the share function, allowing people to select multiple boards to share. They can also review their boards before actual sharing. This is also where people will input official name and location to the app so as to update the community platform.
Reflection
Before we started digging to details, I always thought our application wasn’t that complex, however once we started to develop the app, I found that there were lots to consider about just with one function. For example, consider user would want to compare their data with the results in community platform, we need to figure out a way they can easily compare digital data with the board (or vice versa). The idea was simple and useful, yet visualising it has its own complexity, there is always problems within problems that we need to think it over time to make sure the way we presenting it makes sense. Fortunately we still pull it off and created a way to facilitate this function.
On the other hand, we also received email feedback from Stephanie from TTC. Stephanie did gave us very useful feedback base on our idea, but we didn’t blindly follow what she suggested, we discussed and thought from our point of view, revised what needs to revise, and reject what’s not within our range. E.g. Stephanie suggested us to think about tracing the people we don’t know as well, but We felt that extending the ability of a map to be able to track and trace people who you don’t actually know would result in a trade-off of trust. More importantly, the way to achieve it might probably require GPS and Bluetooth technology which we are trying to avoid, therefore we didn’t focus too much on this perspective for our design. But of course, that could be one direction we can focus on later stage, and that should be something that we need to consider as well. I have learnt to see things with a wider perspective and view the relation between one another.
