Probing Into Customised Data Patterns
Team Panda ( Avani Sharma, Ketaki Paranjape, MOHIT MOHAN )
What happens to our data when it is fed into the system? How can it be useful in providing us a customised service even if it’s not in a regular use?
In terms of security and privacy, personal data sharing is a big concern and how to use this data in such a way that it can effectively benefit an individual, is a challenge. Hence we studied such possibilities in a 5-week studio of Probing into Service, Systems and Infrastructures, where we were supposed to look into gated communities of Bangalore and its implications through platforms like myGate, Apna complex etc.
Looking into the Resident’s daily routine
We conducted interviews and surveys in 2–3 gated communities to generate a data on myGate and to look into the daily routine of residents. This helped us in generating certain insights which has been addressed in- Processing Data collected by apps like myGate: An Extrapolative Probe (A2).
When the response was collected and certain observations were made, a pattern of data flow was mainly observed.
This process helped us in picking out certain or peculiar cases of residents. We picked up 3 cases and defined their scenarios through mapping methods.
But the question still persists “How data of myGate residents can be used for their benefits?”
Mapping the Character for understanding
“For every different role you play it’s nice to have different challenges for each one” — Freddie Highmore
This method helped us to understand what are the needs, threat, strength, expectation, pain & gain points of these characters. These characters are derived from the real people with real scenarios. It allowed us to map their daily challenges and the opportunity where a customise service can be proposed for them by using the data which is available on myGate app.
Experiencing the routine
We noted the 3 scenarios of residents and experienced their daily lifestyle and tried to understand their daily routine pattern which would allow us to propose the best use of myGate for their ease. Allowing their data to be used for their own good by myGate.
Scenario 1
Our first scenario was of Anusha, who is an IT professional. She works in night shift and returns home early morning. She is tired and needs sleep in the morning. She is constantly bugged by the visitors or the delivery person. Also on weekends if she is busy with some work/meeting she doesn’t want to get disturbed in such scenarios.
Scenario 2
Second scenario is of Grandpa. Who is old and lives with his wife and has health issue for which nurse visits him daily and his grandchildren and children on weekends. His pain is that on daily basis he gets call or message for the entry approval of these people and doesn’t want to get notify about them all the time.
Scenario 3
Our third scenario is of Suresh. He is a working professional and has a busy life. He lives with his parents and wife. Due to his busy schedule, he does not want to get disturb for the notification and doesn’t want to get notify all the time. Also, if his parents are outside the town and he wants to host a party, the notifications are sent to his parents also. He does not want this to get notified by his parents.
These 3 scenarios are the peculiar cases that we looked into and tried to find out how best we could use their data from myGate platform to solve their pain points.
Service Blueprint
Service blueprinting is the primary mapping tool used in the service design process. After proposing what customised services could be provided by looking at individual data patterns, we tried to map the connectivity between the front-end and the back-end.
Our focus was mainly on two services –
- Delivery Management
- Visitor Management
Delivery Management
Current Scenario — Once the delivery guy enters the apartment gate, he has to feed his information onto the guard’s device. The database retrieves the phone number of the associated flat and establishes a call/ping to the resident. On approval of the resident only, the delivery boy can give out his parcel.
Problem Area — What if — the resident is not available at that time to answer the call — maybe he is busy in a meeting or some important work!
Proposed Scenario — Now, if the resident is pre-aware that he would not be available for a particular time period, he can disable his flat so that the guard will be notified automatically and will accept the parcel at the gate itself and not disturb the resident.
Visitor management
Current Scenario — Whenever any visitor comes to visit a particular flat, he has to enter his name, contact information and the flat that he is visiting. myGate database retrieves the info of flat owner and sends out a notification asking for visitor approval. The visitor is allowed entry only after the resident has approved.
Problem Area — There are times when you have frequent same visitors, like — nurse, doctor, children living in other corner of city whom you know are going to visit you and you might feel frustrated to approve their entry every single time.
Proposed Scenario — Now, if the resident is aware that a particular visitor is genuine and visits his place frequently, myGate can automatically approve the entry of the visitor based on the patterns from his previous visits. The resident will simply be notified about his entry and need not explicitly approve it.
Presenting the proposed services in the form of Story Boarding.
Activating DND
Here we looked into Anusha’s case, where she doesn’t want to get disturbed by any visitor (which was her pain point). Hence we proposed a small change by looking at the pattern of her daily routine.
Here we have shown that she can activate DND from her phone after coming home which will disable her flat and when the visitor arrives, security guard will get the notification where her flat will be shown disable dand can convey this to the visitor.
(Incase of emergency guard can breach the DND protocol)
Managing Frequent Visitors
Grandpa’s case gave us the insight on how to minimalize the effort of approval for frequent visitors at his place. Here we looked into the data of the frequent visitors (nurse/Grand children) at his place. To ease out his problem of approval, it was decided to propose a solution in which he can send his approval to security guard for his nurse or children, so that they don’t have to send him notification every single time they visit.
Here when the visitors come to meet him the security guard will be notified about the visit pattern of the visitor and approval consent of the grandpa. This will allow the visitor to directly enter the society without filling up the information again and again.
(Only entry and exit timing of the particular visitor will be noted)
Head Control
Suresh’s case deals with the authority and privacy. In such scenario, we proposed a service for suresh where he can control the notifications of his family members by selecting the member he wants to notify. He can act as an admin of his house and take control of the people he wants the notification to be send.
(family members can appoint admin to any of the person they want to)
The services proposed are on the basis of the data and insight that are generated through the interviews conducted. These services are customised for the resident who want to opt and are not forceful. Our aim was to look into the data myGate is using and find a pattern which could help myGate in providing such services.
Our Journey
Takeaway
During this whole studio, we came across several insights for our own. The learning and outcome of this research (Gated community) led us to several pathways-
- We began with security concerns in a society to data privacy
- We learned the hard ways of deriving data from a structured and strict system
- The critic to our own project brought us down to narrowing the topic further to data privacy
- Service design tools came into handy for this studio
- Mapping character and experience played an important role for our findings
- Proposing a service with sync to all the aspects keeping in mind i.e.- Society, myGate, residents
- Pain and gain points made us to brainstorm on what customisation the service needs and how can we make a Service blueprints out of it
The Finale
The output generated on the basis of our findings and understanding of myGate services and its data pattern to rejuvenate its data into a customise services for the residents. These services are for such cases that surfaced while conducting the research through design on residents. To support our research and findings we came up with our final output as character mapping, Experience mapping, 3d model and a service blueprint.
Limitations & Future Scope
From the feedback and critics received, we realised that we could have taken a different approach to “Customised Services”.
One important limitation that needs to be focused is “Privacy”. Some of these services were based on data patterns of individuals’ lives. As per the proposal, the system would approve certain activities based on the these patterns.
What-if the resident doesn’t want a certain activity to happen at a particular time? Also, what-if some stranger takes advantage of the pre-approved facility and breaches into the private space of the resident.
Thus, we would be looking at the whole aspect of “Customised Services” from a different angle and propose a new model.
