Design Process

My idea for this project is the idea of informing students about all these surveillance cameras that are being used around campus and even classrooms. It is quite common to find all these cameras here at Tongji. When I first came to the class, I have only noticed some cameras on the side of lobbies or next to the buildings, which were not bothering me and I think it functions as a way of providing protections to students and staffs, however, when I accidentally went to the serenity room and saw all these cameras in classrooms that are in high resolution, I was surprised and asked many of my classmate if they knew anything about it, I was even more surprised by the fact that they were not informed by the existence of these cameras. Then I started to wonder if the existence of these cameras needed to be notified, therefore I decided to create this project to be the one who informs all the people who entered the room.

Reflection

As someone who lives in the society, I have always been curious about survillent. The boundary between one individual and the surveillance system is something that I want to dig into. For this project, I specifically focused on surveillance within the school/academic environment. Therefore, the target audiences are the ones who are currently taking classes at Tongji University(since I am currently enrolled there). I have accidentally found out that there are cameras on campus, specifically in classrooms that capture people’s movements and behaviors on high resolution. It quite surprised me that many of the students that I have encountered do not know about the existence of these cameras or thought that the cameras are actually functioning. I want to create this project to remind them. I also wonder if there is a need for notification and clarification? I think there is definitely a lack of information, which is important to be noticed since it does contain private information. At the start of the project, I used a very subtle and light color to try to present the welcoming, cozy atmosphere that the school has for the first day of school. The circling background represents the fireworks and shows that the school usually pulled up to welcome the students. When you click to enter the room, the ‘you are being watched’ pops up to alarm the students about the fact that there are security cameras projected in the classroom. The color of the background changed into a darker color and the speed of the circle increased suddenly to mimic the urgent emotions.