SOCIAL MEDIA DESIGN PROJECT

Pitch

Concept summary: The app “Safe Step” is designed for use in Morgantown, WV as part of the campaign to clean up the downtown sidewalks. The app will allow Morgantown residents to interact with both mobile sidewalk cleaning crews and with city safety monitors at the surveillance camera site. Photographs of problem items/situations are relayed to the appropriate recipient along with GPS indicators on maps showing the location of the reported items.

Why Me: I have spent considerable time photographing and videoing cleanliness and safety issues on Morgantown sidewalks, and in consolidating them into the digital curation project already completed. I am determined to see downtown Morgantown sidewalks made clean and safe, and plan to show the digital curation project to the Mayor of Morgantown and the City Council this summer. As part of a campaign that will incorporate posters, signs, advertisements and billboards, this app could be utilized to afford residents the capability of participating first hand in cleaning up our town.

Detailed Scenarios: John is a resident of South Park. He walks to classes on the WVU campus every day, sometimes several times a day. John, unless he takes the longer, less direct route across the Pleasant St Bridge, must cross the narrow Walnut St foot bridge. John cannot afford to be distracted too much by his phone as he walks, or he may step into any one of the several piles of dog droppings on the bridge that day. Each day brings a new crop of droppings that have been left purposefully by negligent pet walkers. Some piles disappear with a rain, or some are eventually ground down by the shoes of other not as observant and nimble as he is. John opens the Safe Step app on his phone and selects the REPORT A PROBLEM button, which opens his phone camera viewer. He takes a picture of the pile, hits the REPORT button, and a drop-down appears. From this he selects the top one, “Turd Alert”, hits SEND REPORT, and the location of the pile shows up on a map. Casey and his cleaning crew can consult the map and the photograph, and a cleaner can be sent to the location to take care of it. Numbers appear in each marker to show how many times the particular item has been tagged. Each reporting individual can tag an item only one time in a three hour period.  Users can also leave anonymous comments which other users can read.

Once the problem has been remedied, John will receive a notification and a “Thank You!” for his help. John will also receive points for both reporting and for when the problem is resolved, which will add towards the gift of a free coffee or soft drink or ice cream at a participating downtown store when enough points are received. John will have the satisfaction of knowing he has helped make his walk to class a little bit safer for him and the many others who use the bridge and sidewalks.

Casey will be able to check locations about town that need attention, and he and his crew will have a trackable record of the work that they have done.

Mary is a student at WVU who lives on campus. She will occasionally go downtown to shop or to buy something to eat. One evening Mary goes with some friends to have a drink in one of the High Street bars, and sees a fight on the street. She opens the Safe Step app on her phone and takes a picture of the fight, hits the REPORT button and selects the last drop down which says “Safety alert”. When she next hits SEND REPORT, the photo and location and any notes she has added go to the Public Safety office. The office will notify the police in this case. If things got really out of hand or an ambulance was needed, Mary would call 911 directly. But now there is a photographic record of the incident and the situation is made clearer for the responders. 

A few days later, Mary runs into John at a store where they are both redeeming coupons for a free coffee. They buy a couple of donuts to go with the coffees, and sit together and talk.

Residents can also choose drop downs that send reports of trash or miscellaneous items on the sidewalks, which send GPS locations to a separate map for response by Casey and his crew.  Casey will also benefit by receiving the photos and notes that clarify the situations.

Market Context and Competitors: As this is not a commercial money making app, the concept of market and competitors is not as important as it might be. It is possible that the city would pay for the app to be developed, and at some point could receive remuneration from other cities wishing to use the app for themselves. This may recoup some of the money spent to develop the app.

Safe Step app seems most like WAZE, a real time traffic, road info and navigation app for drivers. What WAZE is for drivers, Safe Step is for downtown walkers. Like WAZE, Safe Step is also anonymous for users submitting reports. The only app I have found that pertains to sidewalks online is “Sidewalk Buddy” (a good name, too bad it is already taken). That app uses the front facing phone camera to show a small sized video of the street ahead of you so you can avoid bumping into things while you are texting and walking. The app is in no way similar to Safe Step in purpose or use.

Snapshot is used for picture taking, and the photo page and “Send to” pages are somewhat similar to Safe Step. The “Send to” page of Snapchat acts as the drop down list of Safe Step for directing sending the photo.

Snapshot photo and send list

There are many apps that allow a GPS location marker to appear on a map. An app called “GPS Map Camera” allows you to take a picture and add a location marker on a Google map. The app is complicated with features to add weather, latitude/longitude information, etc. but these do not need to be employed, and it does mark a location on a map.
 

Final Concept Push: Safe Step will encourage active participation in the process of making Morgantown sidewalks safe and pleasant for pedestrians. We should enjoy the experience of walking about our city. The app would help people alleviate the feeling of helplessness they are faced with when overwhelmed with unpleasant walking conditions. The fact that they are doing something to resolve the situation will relieve them from feeling like a helpless victim. It would also be fun to watch the markers appear on the maps, and to see how many other individuals have walked by and tagged the same offending item before it is cleaned up. Users can gain a greater sense of safety, knowing that someone is monitoring a Safety Alert message. The app will draw attention to the Morgantown downtown cleanup campaign and will be a tool in the cleanup work.

Storyboard:

 

CRITICAL REFLECTION for Social Media Design Project

Introduction For this project, many design principles were used, including the usual ones —alignment, chunking, the five hat racks, and satisficing. But the design of an app is a more technical process than the digital curation project, and calls into play several related design principles that are needed to make a functioning system work. The app is not just being viewed, it must perform a task. Therefore, for the four design principles most important to this project I have chosen: Hick’s Law (pg. 120), Flexibility/Usability Tradeoff (pg. 102), and Ockham’s Razor (pg. 172) and Color (pg. 48). I plan to show how all of these overlap in their function and work together as a whole.  My pitch is in written form, but my storyboard/scenario is in video form. This is an example of satisficing at work, since if I had had more time I may have been able to present the entire pitch in video format.

Four Design Principles Used

   Hick’s Law states, “The time it takes to make a decision increases as the number of alternatives increase.” The less complicated the app is, the easier it will be for users to grasp its use. There are only three options given in the reporting drop down to choose from. A user will be walking somewhere, very likely in a hurry, when they use this app and it will need to be quick and efficient to use. The first choice will be whether to bother to take a picture of an item or not, a yes or no decision. The motivation to take a picture will be civic duty or disgust with conditions, or perhaps to earn points for a prize. Even the prizes will be limited to only two or three so the choice will not be overwhelming.

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   Flexibility/Usability Tradeoff means that the more tasks something can perform, the more unwieldy and difficult to use it becomes. The app needs to be intuitive to use. Therefore the tasks it can perform are limited. It can send a report one of three categories of situations. Cleaning crews get two maps for the locations of two of these situations, and the security monitor gets the picture, text and GPS location for the third situation category. The resident user will only be reporting situations and adding a numbered tag to the situation location and collecting points and prizes, although they can view the maps. The responders will be able to view the maps and to remove the numbered tags when the situation is resolved. These are limited and simple tasks.

    

    Ockham’s Razor states that “Entities should not be multiplied without necessity.” Unnecessary elements decrease a design’s efficiency. This principle is already covered in Hick’s Law with the limited number of choices to make on the app, and with Flexibility/Usability Tradeoff for the limited tasks that the app does. The visual elements are also kept to a minimum. Text is kept to a minimum. Icons are used sparingly to enhance the readability of the text, as a picture says what many words might need to say. Colors are kept to a minimum on each screen and overall.

   Color is used as an organizational tool and to create a mood. The color of the background and of the app logo color is green for its biophilia effect. Button colors are bright so as to be more cheerful, in order to counteract the pictures being taken of dog droppings and trash. This will also make the app seem more “fun” to use. Buttons using the same word “report” on them are different colors. When the function is to send the report, rather than to move from screen to screen, the button is orange rather than green or blue. The orange is more noticeable.  This signifies a more final situation, the report is finally being sent. The button is not red as that would imply danger or stopping. Sending the report should not seem dangerous and the user should not hesitate to send a report.

Conclusion These principles all work together since they emphasize simplicity and efficiency. Apps can do so much that they can overlap each other in function. Many incorporate messaging along with everything else. It could be possible for users of the app to be able to see messages that others have included about the photos they have sent. This would be an unnecessary addition and would add clutter, and would encourage Reddit-like comments and replies. There are enough ways for people to message and text each other as is. This app would be solely for reporting unclean or unsafe situations anonymously, and for use as a tool to remedy those situations. As such a tool, it may prove useful in the campaign against sidewalk dirt and hazards in downtown Morgantown.

 

PRESENTATION

To be given as a demonstration in class, similar to what was done with the Digital Curation Project. The presentation will not be given as an in character pitch.