DROR Personal Safety App
Helping users create a community safety net
Research
First, getting familiar with the concept of personal safety
Having only my personal experience to rely on, I really had no idea what challenges people faced in their daily lives, nor did I know much about the concept of personal safety in general. I set out to learn as much as possible about personal safety with a few research goals in mind.
Research goals
Situations for Use
What risky situations do people encounter?
Existing Solutions
What solutions are currently available?
Motivations & Challenges
What are users motivations & challenges?
Competitive Analysis
Next, I analyzed the currently available solutions.
I looked at existing personal safety apps to analyze what was working and what wasn't and see what I could learn. I discovered a few popular ones and some up-and-coming ones to see if they were taking a different approach.
Citizen
Citizen is a personal safety network that provides access to real-time 911 alerts and allows users to share relevant updates.
The app attempts to increase transparency between the city and its residents.
Key values
Citizen takes a unique approach to alerts by sourcing content from bystanders and linking incidents to locations. Updates on incidents arrive real-time, making it more safe for a user who is approaching an area.
Key Insights
Individual Needs
Factors such as a person's age, gender, effect their concerns about safety and their needs
Environmental Factors
Being in an unfamiliar place, or not knowing the local language can endanger safety
Socioeconomic Disparities
Living in a neighborhood with a high crime rate increases the risk of dangerous encounters
Medical Issues
Having a medical condition can make you vulnerable in your own home
User Interviews
I heard from the potential users themselves.
We interviewed potential users of different ages and backgrounds. We inquired about the challenges they face in dangerous situations, the platforms they use and prefer, and also delved into specific pain points.
I was curious about their routes for travel, who they relied on to help stay safe, how they kept themselves informed of incidents around them.
Concept Ideation
Through synthesis of all the data gathered, I realized...
A person can keep themselves safer if they have the necessary information on hand and when they are not isolated and stay in touch with others.
....which helped me hone in on the problem spaces I wanted to focus on.
At this point, I was brimming with ideas but I knew I couldn't do everything that came to mind. Identifying these key problem spaces from my data synthesis helped me select ideas to move forward with. With each idea, I asked myself:
Do these ideas address one of these key problem spaces?
What's the resources required vs. possible impact on success metrics?
How risky is it? Is it worth the investment?
How might we
Key design opportunities started to arise.
1
How might we help people alert others when they are in danger?
2
How might we help people feel more secure while traveling?
3
How might we make people aware of incidents near them?
4
How might we make people aware of how safe an area is?
HMW help people reach out to others when they are in danger?
Addressing the lack of emergency services
India is marked by a severe lack of infrastructure in public safety, the centralized emergency services available such as dialing 911 are highly unreliable.
In times of distress often times the authorities take too long to respond to a situation and bystanders are not able to offer adequate help.
Alerting emergency contacts
India is marked by a severe lack of infrastructure in public safety, the centralized emergency services available such as dialing 911 are highly unreliable.
In times of distress often times the authorities take too long to respond to a situation and bystanders are not able to offer adequate help.
HMW help people feel more secure while traveling?
Solution
Creating a responsive community network
Creating a community network that a user could depend on was critical to ensure their peace of mind and safety. We decided to ask for the user's emergency contacts right at the onboarding of the app.
Track my trip
Users can have their emergency contacts track their live location when they are commuting, particularly on public transport. If they deviate from their route an alert will be sent to make sure they are safe.
HMW make people aware of incidents near them?
Solution
Reporting local incidences
Keeping users aware of the latest news around their city allows them to avoid areas where an incident has occurred, warn others, or provide useful information to the community.
Leveraging social networks
Video recordings posted on social media have become an extremely powerful tool in spreading awareness about issues that more people would never have observed otherwise.
HMW make people aware of how safe an area is?
Solution
Rating how safe places are
Rating places for safety can help newcomers to a city when they visit new areas. This could also help authorities gauge the public’s perception of an area as all ratings are based on user feedback. Users can view ratings from the community and read reviews about how others perceive the space. We prompted locations which the user visited in order to get more reviews and more accurate ratings.
Creating awareness amongst users
A simple 5 star rating system made it easy for users to gauge the safety of a place. We hoped this would draw attention to civic issues and lead to improvements in our environment in terms of safety. For example an area could be unsafe because of the lack or streetlights.
User Feedback
So, what did users think?
This app would benefit segments of society who were more vulnerable such as young women. The topic of personal safety is also a very sensitive topic making it all the more important to make it a seamless experience. Keeping this in mind we sought their valuable feedback on what we created.
Concerns around credibility of reporting
They thought the changes were great and features they'd like. However, concerns they brought up were:
Lack of trust around incident updates
In the age of fakes news, users were vary of whether or not . In order to rectify this we decided to add a feature where other users could verify the incidents. We could also certify certain users who had a high rate of posts verified by other users.