The recent increase in violent crimes against vulnerable groups has become a serious social problem. In the first quarter of 2023, the total number of crimes increased by 9.5 per cent compared to last year, the highest quarterly increase in the last t...
The recent increase in violent crimes against vulnerable groups has become a serious social problem. In the first quarter of 2023, the total number of crimes increased by 9.5 per cent compared to last year, the highest quarterly increase in the last three years, and the number of emergency 112 calls was the highest ever. In addition, violent crime against women continues unabated. As 82.5 per cent of violent crimes are reported by female victims, the National Police Agency has increased the distribution of smartwatches to enhance the safety of crime victims and reporters. ‘Smartwatch (location device) support’ is a system that allows victims to quickly request police protection using their smartwatches in times of crisis. Smartwatches are the most preferred means of protection for crime victims because of their close proximity to the body. It is also a good product to respond to sudden emergencies in daily life. However, the rate of misidentification of smartwatches has been increasing every year, rising to 84.7 per cent in 2023, leading to concerns about the waste of police power. While the effectiveness of smartwatches as a victim protection tool has been debated, academic evaluations are scarce. Existing studies have mainly discussed institutional and systemic issues and measures from the perspective of police officers. There is a lack of research from the perspective of actual users, and there is a need for empirical, experience-based research. This study aims to analyse the factors that can be combined from human, technology, and design studies and apply them to smartwatch interaction design in order to derive types of inputs that are easy to operate and clearly convey information for users to respond quickly when making a report in an emergency situation while wearing a smartwatch. This study focuses on smartwatch interaction and collects smartwatch input types for quick response in emergency situations, and operationally defines user experience factors for the study based on prior research on emergency 112 calls. In addition, based on case studies of smartwatches, smartwatch input types are derived as ‘physical buttons’, ‘voice commands’, ‘screen touch’, and ‘gestures’ and set as independent variables. The dependent variable is the user experience, which is derived from previous studies as ‘quickness’, ‘intuitiveness’, ‘reliability’, and ‘safety’, and the moderating variable
is the age difference among women who are victims of violent crime. To examine the differences in smartwatch operation by age, we divided the participants into two groups: ‘20s and 30s’ and ‘40s and 50s’. In a prototype-based experimental survey, 70 women in their 20s and 50s were asked to watch a stalking scenario, an emergency crime situation, and respond to questions about their user experience (speed, intuitiveness, reliability, and safety) on a 5-point scale while watching the experimental video for each type of smartwatch input. Based on the collected data, one-way ANOVA and two-way ANOVA were conducted, and Tukey's HSD post-hoc test was used to identify differences in user experience. Qualitative data was collected through interviews to provide evidence for the findings. The results of the study are as follows In testing research question 1, we found that there are significant differences in the user experience of different types of smartwatch inputs for quick response in emergency crime situations, and both hypotheses were accepted. Specifically, screen touch had the lowest mean user experience and gesture had the highest mean user experience across all user experience factors, indicating that participants perceived gesture to be a fast, intuitive, reliable, and safe way to operate a smartwatch for quick response during an emergency. In validating research question 2, we found that the types of smartwatch inputs for quick response in emergencies (physical buttons, voice commands, screen touch, and gestures) showed significant differences in quickness across age groups, but not in intuitiveness, reliability, or safety. Furthermore, we open-coded interview comments to test our hypotheses. In doing so, we sought to identify the types of smartwatch inputs that are appropriate for rapid response in emergency crime situations. Our overall conclusions are as follows. Firstly, for both women in their 20s and 50s, it is important to be able to act quickly and without the perpetrator's knowledge to ensure their safety when using a smartwatch to report an emergency crime. Second, when reporting an emergency crime with a smartwatch, women in their 20s and 30s chose gestures and women in their 40s and 50s chose physical buttons as the interaction method for quick response. The quantitative findings suggest that the reason for the difference in responsiveness by age is that the older the person, the harder it is for them to learn new things because they are bound by their past experiences. For women in their 40s and 50s, physical button presses on smartwatches were the least disruptive in urgent situations, rather than learning new gestures. Thirdly, gestures as a simple and easy method are prone to malfunctions and errors, which needs to be addressed. We wanted to make it as simple as possible but error-free for everyday use. This will enable quick and safe responses using smartwatches in emergency situations.