The Driving Standards Agency management conferences are aimed at senior DSA managers to promote strategic thinking and define a vision for the future. In the past, these conferences lacked interactivity and engagement. To spice things up me and the team from HMC came up with the concept of ‘Diary Wheels’; A classic Mini Cooper, painted in the DSA’s colours. The car was gutted and pimped out with a plasma screen TV and custom built video diary software. Think of Kit from Knightrider but with a twist!

“The Diary Wheels concept was not only innovative and topical, but provided us with a new approach to gaining feedback from our staff in a humorous and engaging way” Diane Wragg, Internal Communications Manager, DSA

Once a user climbed inside the Diary Wheels the well known voice of Big Brother interrogated the delegates for a bit of Q&A fun. With all answers automatically recorded and edited overnight to be shown as vox-pops the next day (which received a huge round of applause), it proved to be the most successful way of finding out what really matters to DSA staff. At one point five DSA employees climbed into the Mini at once! For each conference over an hour of high quality feedback footage was filmed, edited and delivered to the DSA.

The Diary Wheels has since been around the country on tour. It has been particularly successful in engaging with the 18-24 demographic, an age range which the DSA traditionally had trouble receiving adequate feedback from.

Role
Software project management, UX, Install

Length
4 weeks. Completed in 2008

Team size
Creative Director, Project manager, Designer, UX, Developer, 2xInstall crew

Deliverable
Interactive Mini

Design process
Interaction audit, concepting, UX and visual design, user testing, design refinements

A positive viewpoint:

Take the popular Nike+ system. By putting a small computer chip in your running shoes and synching it to your iPod, you can track your run, monitor your progress, and perhaps most importantly, connect with a community of runners.

http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/04/the-power-of-personal-informatics/

A negative viewpoint:

Police regularly use information on the adult Oyster card system to get details about passenger movements. BBC London has learned that in the past year they made at least 3,000 requests for information.

….Transport for London [has] made it mandatory for children aged between 11 and 18 to carry an Oyster photocard in order to gain free travel. A spokesperson for TfL said the card holder was required to abide by its Behaviour Code.

A young person with criminal convictions, warnings, reprimands and other sanctions committed on the public transport network could have the right to free travel withdrawn, the spokesman said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7473959.stm

So how long before ‘Big brother is watching you’ becomes a reality? Not long, in fact it’s already happening.

http://www.verichipcorp.com/ supply implanted RFID chips for ‘Patient identification’, ‘Infant protection’, ‘Wander protection’ and ‘Asset tracking’. Hmm, Asset tracking sounds handy, I might get my Flash developers in work implanted…