A button that just says "I'm Safe"

Thinking about how when I first went to Germany and there was a terror attack. I remember there was a button on facebook that just said "I'm Safe" and it was to tell people that you didnt get killed or hurt in the attack. Of course Facebook knows your location so it automatically pops up if you are near by the incident.

I couldnt help but think that this wasnt going to be the last time I hit a button like that. I keep thinking about it as 2020 moves along with more and more crazy news each day, and with protests happening everywhere. What happens when facebook doesnt give you a button. How do you let everyone know? Lots of people got hurt and arrested, dragged into unmarked vehicles and held against their will, but there was no button for that. No button unless facebook thinks its warranted. I think having these types of things mediated by giant corporate 3rd parties is strange and concerning. How much of our communication do we want to hand over to facebook for example. Obviously this is a very useful feature and Im sure it is up there as one of the better more moral things that facebook has done.

Not sure why I did this as a painting. I guess I have been thinking about exploring the interface which has become this dominant digital visual language, and create them with traditional mediums. Buttons, sliders, text fields, pop-ups, drop downs, avatars, loading animations. These are all these ubiquitous recognized symbols now that a couple decades ago didn't exist. They only really exist in the interface because they are functional and wouldn't exist in places where they couldn't function.

<more thoughts on technocratic privilege etc>

<aside> 💡 Just make a simple painting of a button in the typical UI style, not realistic render, more pixel perfect with edges like it got enlarged. Rounded edges, one pixel shadow etc. Use rectangular panel. Draw pixel grid on it to start then just fill the pixels

</aside>

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/61769c7e-24d7-4eb7-b1ee-161339229f70/Screen_Shot_2020-10-07_at_1.37.34_AM.png