Safely App
UX/UI team design project for women’s safety when walking alone
This was a school group project. It was voted to be the “Best Digital Prototype Design” 3rd Place Winner
Role
Research, ideation, Product Design, Usability Testing
Timeline
October 2022 - December 2022 • 8 weeks
Type
Team Project, Mobile/Watch Application
Teammates
3 x Product Designers
Problem
People, primarily women, feel unsafe while walking home or other places alone.
There is currently not any mainstream solution for this problem or any quick method for women to contact someone or find safety when they encounter a dangerous situation alone.
Solution
Research
According to the Office of National Statistics, around 49% of women reported feeling unsafe when walking alone at night.
We interviewed 8 people in total, mostly females from age 21 - 35, and wanted to see how we can make women feel more safe walking alone. We found that their main concerns include the following:
1. Cannot get immediate help in emergent cases
2. Emergency contacts are not able to know their live situation or the location in emergent situations
3. The situation doesn’t allow to call/text for help in emergencies
From the result, we found that many ideas are interconnected. We designed our solutions based on these main points. To understand the context better, we created our personas:
Having these findings in mind, we conducted the Comparative Analysis:
Based on all the research above, we decided to build an app on phone and watch that have these features:
The SOS feature allows our users the ability to call 911 and have an automated message play to the dispatcher giving their location and basic description.
The Scream feature plays a noise similar in sound to a car alarm to gain the attention of others around you.
The Flagging feature allows the user to place markers in areas where they have experienced some level of discomfort, notify their emergency contacts of this, and have their marker shown on Safely’s map for other users to see.
The watch version is designed for emergent situations. 3 features above can be triggered by different hand gestures.
Wireframes
User Testings
We conducted two rounds of User Testing on 9 users in total. Based on the results and feedback, we decided to make the following changes:
1. Change the application name at the top bar into the specific action name (eg. “Scream feature”)
2. More intuitive icons to represent a scream
3. Reduced clutters for easier and quicker use
Final Product
Watch Iterations
Based on the User Testing, we changed:
1. For the flag rating, we reduced three buttons to just one button. We wanted to focus on large components o ensure the fast and ease of use, and avoid clutters.
2. Originally, the watch’s threat level buttons were different shades of red. However, after conducting user testing with color-blind individuals we found that it would be beneficial to have the buttons differ in size to help further the difference between threat levels.
3. We also implemented sliders instead of buttons to prevent errors.