Our initial brief posed us the question “What does ‘feeling secure’ mean in 2030?”. Hence, our first step forward was to understand the meaning of feeling secure in the present day. We began by questioning ourselves what terms and topics we associated with the brief. We then split up and performed individual research based on themes we discovered from our brainstorm. After we presented our findings to each other, we came up with the Big Five questions that we wanted to answer during our 20 week project.
To start also collecting our own data on security we first created a survey. With this survey we wanted to test the safety preferences of our own generation, the digital natives. We asked ourselves the question: “What do digital natives do to be and feel secure?”. When we looked for a framework to categorize our findings in, we found the term “holistic security” (https://tacticaltech.org). This states that security measures can be divided over three realms: digital security, physical security and psychosocial security. Digital security entails online and offline security measures for hardware and software use. Physical security entails more obvious safety measures that protect our material possessions. Psychosocial security discusses personal boundaries and self care.
Since we had a community of different cultures and disciplines working beside us, we decided to test our survey on them. We asked them to write down the actions and measures they take to protect themselves and to make themselves feel secure. As a frame, we gave them digital and physical security groups, and provided one empty group for them to be filled in. We hoped to find another realm or proof of the psychosocial realm for security measures.
After the survey we wanted to deduce underlying patterns of safety measures and their meaning. For example we hoped to find underlying values and fears that our generation shares. We studied their safety measures not just in relation to their age, but also in relation to their interests and their cultural backgrounds.
What we concluded after the survey:
– separating both questions as we knew afterwards that there’s a difference between feeling and being secure
– giving examples under each category to give the participant some context when answering
– discussing with the participant afterwards about their answers and the reasons behind them