Watchlight

Concept

Have you ever had that paranoid little moment of wondering what your devices are actually doing behind your back? I have, more than once. That question is basically where Watchlight started.

Smart devices and sensors are everywhere now, quietly collecting data in public spaces without ever really asking. You walk past a smart streetlight, a public display, someone's Bluetooth speaker, and you have no idea what's being picked up. Watchlight is my answer to that: a speculative AR tool that scans for these invisible data leaks and tells you, in real time, when something's watching.

Data Mirror

We're used to not knowing when we're being tracked. It's just background noise at this point. Watchlight flips that. It scans nearby devices for hidden data leaks and surfaces them through AR cues, so instead of guessing, you can actually see it.

Think of it less like a security app and more like a mirror, one that reflects back the surveillance already happening around you, so you can stay aware of it instead of walking through it blind.

Why We Built This

Three user stories I looked at kept circling the same three problems: people don't know when they're being tracked, they have no way to protect themselves in the moment, and they feel like they have zero control over their own data. Sound familiar?

Watchlight was built to answer those three problems directly: tell people what's happening around them, protect them from it automatically, and hand back some control over how they respond.

How It Works

Step 1. Ambient signal scanning

Under the hood, Watchlight is constantly listening for the same kinds of signals your phone already picks up without telling you: BLE beacons, open WiFi, MAC address probes, tracker domains. It scores your surroundings from 0 to 100 based on what it finds, sorting you into one of five zones, each with its own color, so you can read your risk level at a glance instead of parsing a spreadsheet of network requests.

Step 2. Live zone and trigger visibility

Your current zone stays visible the whole time as a small AR overlay, no need to open an app and check. When a specific trigger is nearby, a camera, a beacon, an open network, it shows up as a color-coded icon, and the active privacy mode pops up an explanation right in view.

Step 3. Adaptive privacy modes

Rather than making you dig through settings, three modes (Balanced, Stealth, and Panic) switch automatically based on how serious the zone is. Wander into somewhere Critical, and Panic mode kicks in on its own, no manual toggling required.

The Role of AR

I chose AR glasses over a phone screen on purpose. Nobody wants to be the person standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square staring down at an app instead of the fountain in front of them. AR keeps you hands-free and looking up, with alerts appearing right in your field of view, which matters when the whole point is staying spatially aware, not buried in a screen.

Screenshots from the live interactive simulation. Try it yourself