fitting innovation to need
The initial group discussions about people’s ‘longing’ for privacy was difficult. Not even the experts articulated a strong need for security. But how should we proceed with an service which is obviously disjunct from need? There must be a need for safety/security/privacy but there was a sticky lack of recall as a matter of imaginable or factual experiences. In the beginning we discussed the need for privacy and data security regarding money, legal matter, religion, family and other obviously private affairs. We proceeded to reflect typical behavior patterns, our unhesitating exposure to cloud-computing, search engines and other free sirene-services [Jaron Lanier]. We estimated a very abstract threat and a lack of a seizable and affective problem to design.
First: Financial literacy
Our first strategic idea was to simplify and/or digitize the pocket money as an important learning device for kids [“Sackgeld”]. The idea was to argue that a fair parental, appropriate and connected money experience needs a platform or device which is more simple than the many professional services and better protected than the many apps in stock. Framed by the Patria Digitalis technology we discussed and sketched aspects of a solution for financial learning experiences.
finally … We’ve got the case!
A serious problem for the project was the lack of enthusiasm. We know the importance of a comprehensional understanding of the problem. But neither the business concept nor the financial literacy approach sufficiently motivated the participants. One day we discussed the mysterious practices of ‘credit management service companies’ and their way of handling critical data from Swiss citizens. Their exposure to use data and to communicate to aggrieved parties grounded on a very personal experience made by a member of our working group. The lively and rich descriptions pointed so clearly to a serious problem and emphasized a civic action minded strategy to impose the Patria Digitalis initiative as such.The group expected a massive need for a service to organize legal effective transactions between citizens and data organizations.
a citicen service
The group decided to innovate the Patria Digitalis innovation. The experimentally extended Patria Digitalis idea now includes the existing Patria Digitalis cooperative as a stable social framework, the new Patria Digitalis legal service as a easy to use capacity to execute the legitimate titles for Patria Digitalis members and the existing Patria Digitalis personal cloud as the digital network for secure transactions. The strategy to tie back the generic service to a social issue, points out how to penetrate the usefulness of the Patria Digitalis environment crabwise. Based on this concept the students sketched the given problem, possible services and interactions and outlined a short design brief.
Paradigm
A similar approach and a good example is a new service from the Datenschutzbeauftragte of the Canton of Zurich which provides the citizens with simple [ease of use!] data protection services. This could be one blueprint for further activities.
