Finalist: Connecting
Interaction Awards 2024
Smart home cameras are one of the most popular consumer smart product categories. They’re used for many tasks, such as deterring intruders, monitoring kids and pets, and knowing when packages have arrived. But they also create serious privacy concerns and social tensions between the primary users who own them and a diverse category of people we refer to as adjacent users, like neighbors, tenants, domestic workers, and public bystanders. We designed Arca to address the experiences of adjacent users who lack awareness, consent, control, and benefits. Arca offers four core features. Each exemplifies design patterns and principles applicable to other contexts involving adjacent users, privacy, and smart products.
- Flexible Sharing allows you to customize who you do (or don’t) share access with. The options range from equal co-owner to a limited status view for letting neighbors, tenants, or workers know the location and privacy mode of devices.
- True On/Off Indicators reliably display when a camera is fully activated or deactivated with a combination of lights, sounds, and physical sensor-overlays.
- Medium Privacy mode adds a removable mask that blurs video and muffles audio. Owners can always unmask video to review events, but other users may be notified. This gives you and your household a double peace of mind. Peeking is discouraged, but it’s always an option if something happens.
- Strong Privacy mode fully disables the cam/mic from recording. But you can still be notified with text descriptions of events—like when the kids arrive home, or the cat is chewing on plants.
