Clara - A tool that brings a sense of safety
This is a Brown|RISD MADE studio project. We worked with both Departments of Safety in Brown and RISD to design safety issues for campus and surrounding areas. So we designed Clara, a safety tool that guides you by illuminating the streets that are populated by Community Members in ... real-time.
Project Name: ClaraProject Time: 07.-08.2022Team Members: Mingdong Chen, Karim Ismail, Jiawei Lu, Alejandra Sanchez, Sabrina AlpinoPrimary Role: User Interview, Ideation, Sketch, Prototype, Mechanical StructureResearch
Public safety in the U.S. has been an issue in post-pandemic days, as most crimes take place between 11:45 PM and 3:00 AM.
People generally feel unsafe or insecure about walking alone at night.
80% of people we interviewed and field tested agree with the fact. From the interviews and field research, our findings indicate that people feel the safest with light, and other people around.
So we designed Clara based on our research results. Clara can indicate the density and proximity of university community members in surrounding blocks by the luminosity. With more members around, Clara would give more sufficient light.
Design
To achieve that, the sensor integrated into Clara has an RSSI detection function that can get a list of nearby devices scanned with device names and addresses. Then it compares with the list of users who connect to campus wifi or registered as university community members. It will count and map the users’ number nearby onto light intensity. Scanning will run every 5 seconds and memory will clear with each run.
We interviewed the university safety and security departments at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design to get the data we need. Based on the centric accommodation areas of new incoming students, and weekly and yearly crime reports, we designed the locations of Claras in Providence.
