Probing into the perception of surveillance among residents of a gated community
At a start of the studio, our team decided to look into the idea of surveillance in a gated community. We aimed to address the following questions:
- Why live in a gated community?
- Who were the different stakeholders that were affected by surveillance in a gated community?
- How aware were different stakeholders about surveillance as well as the methods through which surveillance could take place in a gated community?
- What were the reasons that justified surveillance in a gated community?
- What were the different areas that came under surveillance?
By addressing these questions, we wanted to understand whether different stakeholders were impacted differently by surveillance within a gated community. Through research, our team decided to observe the perceptions of stakeholders towards surveillance in a gated community.
Based on time constraints and preliminary research, for our first phase, we decided to focus primarily on residents within a gated community.
How did we go about it?
To better understand the stakeholder perceptions, we decided to research the idea of surveillance for a gated community through Design methods. We decided to create an artefact that employs Game Design methodology to collect information from our stakeholders. We designed a game that would help us understand and observe the awareness of surveillance amongst different stakeholders. It also would help us in identifying the different reasons that would require different surveillance methods within a gated community.
1st Iteration
To understand the awareness of surveillance amongst the stakeholders in a gated housing, a board game was designed as a part of the research-through-design methodology.
The game had a scaled fictional site plan of a gated society, showing the areas commonly present and used by its residents. Also, it had visual stickers and written sticky notes depicting the surveillance methods and its reasons respectively.
As a part of the game, the players were asked to stick the surveillance methods and its reasons (in form of the stickers) in the relevant areas.
Limitations in 1st Iteration
The first iteration of the game only required the participants to assign methods of surveillance to the areas depicted in the board as per their assumptions. In this iteration, we observed that they were not looking at the areas specifically but the site plan as a whole. As a result, there were several areas that were missed out during this iteration. Additionally, they were unable to contextualize methods according to specific reasons for surveillance that we had handed over on the post-it notes. Thus there was a gap in overall understanding of what the end result should be.
Along with this, the game wasn’t intricate thus it did not challenge the participants to think in a certain way.
To address these limitations, we moved on to our second iteration of the game.
Updates — 2nd Iteration
Based on the feedback, following changes were made to make the game more rational and interactive for the players: One, the updated game had two players to play with, to make the game interesting and competitive. Two, the game now had a path (with color-coded action points and movement points) across the society covering different areas inside it. Three, set of action and movement cards were introduced in the game. Four, the players had to follow the path to come across certain scenarios and were asked to identify the surveillance methods used in that particular scenario. Five, interactive sessions were held during the game to gather information about their chosen surveillance methods through informal discussion and conversation.
The journey of a resident in a gated community
Information Visualization
Based on the information collected through the game, the key reasons for surveillance were identified. Through the game process, for residents in a gated community, our team observed the participants reactions to scenarios and collated the responses according to the possible reasons. The scenarios, which were specific to areas of a gated community, helped us understand which were the most likely types of surveillance to exist in a certain area, according to the participants.
Participant Comments
Insights
Through the visualization of the outcomes of the game, we were able to see that the most common types of surveillance across areas of the gated community were Security Guards.
This emphasized on the fact that despite having several means of surveillance existing within a gated community, the first point of contact is always the security guard. It can be interesting to delve into the responsibilities of a guard in the gated community versus the tasks assigned to them.
Adding to the previous point, the responses helped our team in identifying three major categories that surveillance methods could fall under.
- Immediate Response: Usually required during or after a major incident. Must be a human point of contact to make rapid decisions.
- Slow Response: In the event that the incident has already taken place, secondary methods like CCTV could be used to identify the perpetrator.
- Systemic Change to surveillance: If there is a situation that arises repeatedly, that existing surveillance methods cannot counter, a systemic up haul would be needed.
Limitations in 2nd Iteration
In the second iteration of the game, the participants were asked to think about what method of surveillance would be helpful in a particular scenario. The purpose of this experiment was to observe and understand the level of knowledge residents have about the idea of surveillance in a gated community. However, the game was unable to address several important aspects regarding surveillance within a gated community.
Firstly, the game was designed specifically from a resident’s perspective. This meant that it was difficult for different stakeholders to empathize with the scenarios and thus were unable to provide useful information.
Secondly, the game tackled the idea of surveillance in a very broad sense. The players were not provoked into thinking about the impact that surveillance would have on their daily lives. The game was unable to delve into the effects and impact of different surveillance methods in a gated community and what it meant for the participants.
The game was also unable to probe into whether surveillance is needed in certain areas of a gated community. It was not designed to compare different stakeholders’ perspective towards surveillance.
To counter these limitations, our team decided to update the method of gathering information.
Future Updates to the Game
As per the feedback, the game needed a third iteration to create distinct categories of scenarios which would reflect both the positive & negative impact of surveillance.
The positive and negative impact scenarios would help our team probe further into the problem area of surveillance. It would also help us question the necessity of surveillance within a gated community.
There are two concepts based on which the game can be taken forward:
Concept-1
- Creating a story line for the players, which includes the persona creation of the players.
- Updated scenarios will contribute to the progress of the story
- The Scenarios will have both the positive and negative impacts of surveillance on the players.
- By using the above method, we want to observe whether the players can identify with the scenarios and empathize with them.
Concept-2
To make the game more interactive and competitive between the two players, a points-based system would be added to the game. Positive impact scenarios would give points to the player and negative impact points would take away points from the player.
At the end of the game, the person with the most points would be declared as the winner.
The movement points and the movement cards could be used as random cards which had the ability to either give the competitor your negative impact card or take one negative impact card from them. This would add a layer of competition to encourage the players to participate fully.
Future Scope
- The game can be played with other stakeholders (apart from residents) involved in the gated community. This will help in understanding and observing the difference in the perception of surveillance amongst them.
- Exploring and customizing the research-through-design methods to cater to all the stakeholders.
- Visualize information collected using the above methods, in the form of an interactive story line.
- While considering surveillance, it is also necessary to probe further into the need for surveilling different user groups and the implications behind them.
Team Nebula
