Keeping People Safe with Good Design
A well-designed product allows its users to live their everyday lives in a comfortable fashion. This is especially prevalent with security measures, as people feel safer when they can rely on specific devices to keep them out of harm’s way.
Such is the case with the ID card scanner located outside of all WPI campus buildings.
These scanners may not be the prettiest things, but they certainly get the job done.
Whether located outside of an academic building, the campus center, or a residential complex, the scanners require not only the user to have a WPI ID card, but specifically a valid WPI ID card. In other words, not only must the user be a member of the WPI community; he or she must also be able to access that building.
If a student tries to access a dormitory or on-campus housing facility and he or she does not live at that location, access should and will be denied by the ID scanner. This of course prevents those who should not be at that location from entering the building and eliminates the possibility of dangerous situations such as break-ins and robberies.
For those who do have valid access, when they scan their IDs, the scanner will unlock the door for them. The scanner will then re-lock once the valid user has entered the building and/or closed the door.
So how do users know if they have access to a specific building? The answer depends on the color of the LED bar located on the top of the scanner.
The bar is automatically set to red by default, which corresponds to the door being locked. However, if a user scans a valid ID card, the bar will turn green, meaning the door has become unlocked. Otherwise, the bar will remain red and the door will stay locked.
Humans have become accustomed to the color red meaning stop (or incorrect) and green meaning go (or correct), due to traffic lights and other technological devices. The scanner therefore communicates the state of the door efficiently, as a user will know that green means they have valid access.
As no piece of technology is perfect, this ID scanner has its issues. For one, the LED bar occasionally turns blue when a valid ID is held against the scanner for multiple seconds without removal. (I unfortunately did not provide a photo.) This may have been included to tell the user to remove his or her card from the scanner, but if so, it is communicated poorly by the deice.
In addition, certain scanners have known to malfunction due to electrical outages/problems, but otherwise they serve their purpose as desired by the original manufacturers.
It is not the most aesthetically pleasing device, but it does stand out from the brick wall in the first photo shown, and it is large enough to the point where it is difficult to miss.
I ended up choosing this design because the ID scanners can successfully fulfill their purpose: keeping people safe. These scanners contain RFID readers that can tell when a user has been given access to a location, and these devices have been used countless times before in other scenarios.
After all, why fix something that isn’t broken? If something works, then re-use the idea to keep the situation familiar to users and save on production time.