THE PROBLEM
This project was completed as a part of General Assembly's User Experience Design course.
Picture this: You live in the city. Tonight you and your friends decided to go out to a new restaurant in that new up and coming neighborhood. You share some laughs, have a great meal, and now it’s the end of the night. You head home. You’re walking by yourself, down a street you don’t know, that is poorly lit. You feel anxious, worried, and maybe even afraid.
How might we help people feel safer and more confident on their walk home?
The Process
User Research & Synthesis
In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of what people experience, feel, want, and need when they are walking home alone, I interviewed a total of six individuals, male and female, between the ages of 21 and 33. From these interviews I was able to uncover three key insights:
People feel more safe when they are in groups
Having a phone on 20% or less made people to feel like they had no lifeline
- Having a loved one either one tap away on the line as they walk home helps ease the feeling of being vulnerable and alone
Persona
Ideation & Feature Prioritization
Based off of the research I came to the conclusion that a safety navigation application guided by a learning algorithm would help solve the problem. I utilized a two by two matrix (high effort vs. low effort and high impact vs. low impact) help me to define the minimum viable product.
Site Map
This site map to show hierarchy, structure, illustrate user goals, and functionality of the application
Initial Wireframes
To start bringing my vision to life I put pen to paper and developed very low fidelity wireframes. I designed these based off of the user interviews I had completed. I was then able to conduct some initial usability testing with the sketches and iterate.
Mockups
I then designed and tested the next iteration of the application using Sketch and InVision and performed a second round of usability testing. After receiving valuable feedback from in-person and online usability testing, I iterated on the designs for the third time!
