Crime Heartbeat

Website

(This works in the UK only!)

Aims

Following on the theme of Sensory Substitution (see: Perfect Pitch Vibration Belt), I wondered what other data streams we could feel as we go about our daily lives?

Luckily modern browsers in phones have a Vibration API which can play any pattern of on/off vibrations. Combining that with a realtime crime api provided by https://data.police.uk/docs/ and the GPS API we can get all the crimes in the nearest area.

Most vibration notifications are either on or off, but I had calculated a level from 0 (no crime) to 10 (high levels of crime) by weighting nearby crimes by distance. I chose to have crime level 2 as a slow, steady pulse, rising to rapid, staccato pulses when in a level 10 area.

Actual usage

I gave the app link to my friends to see what would happen. The first is that sadly the vibration API doesn’t work consistently (it’s disabled on iOS).

However, the second thing is that there’s a lot of bike theft in Bristol where I live, so the real use-case was actually just to check if it’s safe to lock up a bike. A few happy users, and a lot of interesting conversations, I’m happy with how it went!