With the rise of mobile device usage in today's society, a large majority of the population store their private and sensitive information on said devices. In fact, Australians receive over 250 scam calls annually with 57% of Australians becoming concerned regarding scam calls over the last 12 months (according to CommBank).
Hence, I designed a premise and mock-up for an application called 'Spamwatch'. The application aims to decrease a user's number of encountered spam numbers considerably. Spam calls aim to collect phone numbers who answer, as these users are more likely to be potential victims in the future. The application uses this knowledge and aims to handle the spam callers before they can even be answered. It utilises a database with pre-existing known spam numbers. When one of these spam numbers call the device, the application automatically detects the potential scam attempt and handles accordingly based on user preferences. In the case where the spam number is not in the database yet, users can report the numbers themselves, and upon receiving sufficient endorsement, the number will be added to the database.
This project was done as a part of the course BISM3222 at the University of Queensland which focused on wireframing and prototyping.
In this course, students were asked to identify an emerging problem and design an application to counter this problem. As a result, I chose to focus on scam calls, especially with the importance of cybersecurity in today's society. To conceptualise the application, concepts such as business model canvas, personas, journey maps, storyboards and user stories.
