SafetyFirst

Project Overview

This is an safety-alert App that allows users to setup travel plans, and if they cannot confirm their plans due to emergency situations, a SOS message will be sent to pre-set persons.

My Role in the Project

I am the designer in the team. I worked with my partner, a user researcher and did all the low-fi and hi-fi prototyping. I also helped with the usability test and analyzed the result.

“50% of women say they always or often feel
unsafe walking alone at night ”

The safety problem of people alone, especially women, is still a huge problem. Research shows that 59% of women who ever walk down an alley alone always or often feel unsafe doing so, while 50% feel similarly about walking alone at night.

What are their concerns?

Some App that can help in the market

...BUT these Apps still cannot help AUTOMATICALLY

SafetyFirst works in this way...

Sketch and User Flow

A quick paper prototype test to see if the flow works

High Fidelity Prototype v1.0

After the quick test of the flow, I created the first version of hi-fi interactive prototype.

Homepage
Check-in Trips
  • Trips are listed in timeline with the shortest to end on the top of the homepage. Each trip shows how long before it ends/starts
  • Trips can ben canceled or edited, but only the current one can be confirmed when it is about to end
  • By entering the pre-set 4-digit password, users can confirm their trips. which means they are safe
  • If they cannot confirm the trip on-time or the second check 5-mins later, a SOS message will be auto-send to the persons they set in that trip
Trip Adding/Editing
  • Users can add new trips or edit existing trips
  • The color on the submit button shows the process they've accomplished. The button is disabled before every input boxes have the valid value

Usability Test for v1.0

5 participants were invited to the test. The tasks of this test includes reviewing the whole App, adding a new trip and check-in the current trip. The test is aimed to see if they can figure out what this App can do and use it easily.

The result came out to be very well. All 5 participants understand the purpose of the App by reviewing it and accomplished tasks. They also gave a 4.4 out of 5 for the overall experience.

However, the test also shows some flaws in this design. The text for some features are not consistent ("edit" and "update", "cancel" and "delete"), and the word "check-in" made 2 participants confused a little bit. The submit button is also hard to find since it's not on the first page.

High Fidelity Prototype v2.0

Based on the feedback, a new version of hi-fi prototype is created. I changed the color to ensure a better accessibility, and changed the design of some elements to highlight the content

Homepage v2.0
  • Changed the design to gain a better accessibility
  • Texts of the same features are now consistent
  • Changed "Check-in" to "Arrived" for better understanding
Trip Adding/Editing v2.0
  • Changed the design to highlight the content, deleted most of the strokes
  • Changed the gap between elements and the design of submit button. Now it can show in the first page
  • Strengthened the design of submit button when it is clickable
Confirm Trips
  • Changed the color so the text can be easier to read

Usability Test for v2.0

After the optimization of the design, we conducted a second test for the new design. This time, we invited 2 participants (neither was in the test before) and asked them to do the same tasks as last time.

It turned out the new design really worked. Both of the participants gave a 5/5 for the experience, and telling that they love how simply and clear this App is. One of them even mentioned that it'd better not to add too much functions in the future versions.

Future Direction

Even keeping the App to be simple, it still have some rooms of improvement. Adding a GPS function will be helpful for the contacts to find the user who sent SOS. Gesture control will also be convenient for users to quickly send message if something happens.