A piece of interactive technology which I encounter on a daily basis is the digital door that is located on the ground floor of my residential building. It requires a scan of the user’s student ID card for the door to open up. When the card is scanned, the door makes a sound signalling the success of the procedure. Once the door is open, the student can pass and the door closes automatically for the next user to scan their cards.

The opening of the door is time-based meaning, after a pre-programmed time, it closes regardless of whether the user is using the door or not. This has caused an inconvenience for instances when I need more time to pass through the entrance. For example, during the moving in or out periods, students have luggage(s) or moving trolleys, usually more than one, that they must pass through the door. As the door is time-based, what often happens is that the door closely on the student and the door becomes locked, leading to systematic failure. This happens so frequently that security guards often advise students to use the alternative manual doors, decreasing the overall security of the building. A potential solution to this could be the addition of a movement filter on the sides of the door which recognizes movement – a technology already widely employed for automatic doors in many public buildings. If the system recognizes the movement, it simply stays open.

Another inconvenience that I have encountered with these doors is using the student cards for identification. There are two reasons to why this has caused inconvenience for not only myself but also many of my colleagues. Firstly, most people store their cards at the back of their phone cases. Hence, they must always take out their phones before passing the door which is a hard process when the person is carrying many objects. I have had personal experience of dropping my phone and breaking my screen during this process. Also, losing your student card, which happens more frequently than I desire, means I can no longer enter the residential building. A potential solution to this problem could be using a part of our bodies as the key to the doors such as our eyes or fingerprints. This not only increases convenience but also security. When a student card is lost, any individual possessing the lost card can enter the building. However, a part of a person’s body is more complex to replicate in a form that can be used as the key to the digital doors without looking suspicious to the security guards.