Impact of Apartment Management Security System on Children

Probing into the apartment management system to understand its implications of security features on children’s mindset

Team: 10 Hills | Siddarth Sreekumar, Vijay Chaitanya, Vishnuprasad Jahagirdar, Yelumalai S

Overview

One of the essential purposes for anyone to rent, lease or purchase a house in a gated society is the wellbeing and security of their family. myGate — a leading organization for security management in gated community quotes, “Our app’s children safety feature will help parents be aware of and give approval for the movement of their children when they step out of the community, unaccompanied by parents.”

Young children deal with many of the same emotions adults do. Children get angry, sad, frustrated, nervous or embarrassed, but they often do not have the words to talk about how they are feeling. Instead, they sometimes act out these emotions in very physical and inappropriate ways.

Security features have always been a primary concern for organizations like myGate, but the impact of these security functions on children’s and teenagers mindset made us curious to study and understand this issue more.

Figure 1: Exit Denied for Unescorted Child by Security Guard at Gated Community (Image Source: https://mygate.in/home)

Research Objective

Understanding the area of apartment management system dealing with security from the perspective of both child and parent. Studying the behavioral change in children, teenagers raised due to the system’s security functions affecting their relationship with parents and peers. Capturing repercussive emotional change raised due to these situations which affect their personal lives and routine.

Intervention Area

A child who wants to go out and play in the ground with his friends, who wants to get some food from the neighboring store, who wants to meet his friends outside has to depend on apartment management platform technology, security guard’s approval, and a go-ahead from parents.

Doesn’t it seem like forcing them to only look straight and not at the world around? Aren’t we holding them back to be independent? Wouldn’t these actions emotionally hurt them and put them down?

To address such questions we started our research. We assessed why apartment management system is needed in the first place. In our secondary research, we tried to gain insights about myGate and its working.

Figure 2: Mindmap v1.0

Figure 3: Insights from Secondary Research

Figure 4: myGate Platform Working Map

Why are we focusing on the mindsets of children and relationships in Apartment Management System?

As childhood and adolescence play an important role in shaping a person’s characteristic traits and personality, understanding these scenarios which could affect the child’s relations and mentality is crucial.

Kids usually fight with Stress, peer pressure, insecurity, low self-esteem, overthinking, anger, sadness.

Figure 5: Instance of a security feature in myGate

Age group in focus

We are primarily focussing on children and teenagers of age group ranging from 8 to 19.

Figure 6: Scenario where the child tries to breach the security

Expected Output

Personas, journey map, storyboards, and scenario scripts which leads to a concept video.

Possible Outcomes from our interventions?

Communicating how security features of apartment management system can create disturbance in children and teenagers mindset.

Daywise Project Plan

Figure 7: Daywise Project Plan

Feedback Received

1. Looking at children’s behavior and emotions is an interesting aspect. Do look at few research papers and HCI conference exclusively based on children.
2. Focus on one thematic concept and work rigorously towards the outcome.
3. Demonstrate various scenarios by deriving implications.

References

1. myGate Launches Child Safety & Security Feature for Gated Premises [https://mygate.in/blog/mygate-launches-child-safety-security-feature-for-gated-premises/]
2. Teaching Your Child to: Identify and Express Emotions [http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/familytools/teaching_emotions.pdf]
3. Feelings and emotions [http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=287&id=1530]
4. An age-by-age guide to helping kids manage emotions — Sanya Pelini [https://www.mother.ly/parenting/age-by-age-guide-to-helping-kids-manage-emotions]

Figure 8: A Child’s emotion captured on the denial of permission to step out of the gated community (Image Source: https://mygate.in/blog/mygate-launches-child-safety-security-feature-for-gated-premises/)