Project info

Time: 10 Weeks

Team: Lukas Moro, Tobias Ertel, Amanda Wallgren

Type: Umeå Institue of Design

Course: Internet Police: Co-Design for Trust, Support, and Security

Supervisor: Prof. Brendon Clark, Niklas Andersson, Prof. Monica Lindh-Karlsson

Year: 2022

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About the project

This project is focused on lowering the threshold for youth taking action, and receiving assistance, when they feel something weird is happening on the internet.

Every year, there is an increase in online crime against children and young people, and there is an urgent need to focus early on crime prevention in the digital world.

In a "co-creational" approach, we worked together with the Swedish and Norwegian police to develop a solution to make the internet a safer place for young people.

The “Authority Buffer”

Approaching the police today, especially when something happens online, comes with a lot of insecurities. There is a need for a buffer zone between the youth and the police that enables a culture of trust and support – without having to fear for unknown consequences. We think that the "Buffer" Community Approach will decrease the threshold for taking action against online crime.

The App

The Process

An intense research phase with a total of 11 qualitative interviews defined the whole design process. To understand the needs of the youth, it was important to involve them in the design process. Two workshops were conducted later in the process, in which we worked with "boundary objects," among other things.

During the workshops, I learnt how to shift between being a designer to being a facilitator of the design process and methodology. Often, not even the participants notice the real problems, that's why it is critical to interact with our co-creation participants empathically in order to highlight the real problems.

Key insights