Tutela is a non-profit mobile application that highlights safety targeted towards women so they can feel more safe when in an uber or walking home. It allows users to play customizable, pre-recorded audio and video calls to mimic a real one and shows any threats that the user is not alone.
In society, human trafficking cases lacks equitible data recordings in comparison to other crimainal cases, such as burglary. The criminal justice system also lacks equal investigation qualities and motivation when crimes involve female-dominated victims. Additionally, thousands of U.S rape cases are recorded in the police department every year and there has yet to be accountability to the perpetrators and liability to these victims, specifically women.
In the light of a COVID world, we have recognized that safety has taken a more important role as the dangers of human trafficking and women saftey should be one of our top priorities despite higher institutions’ lack of motivation to develop quality and equitable preventions.
Through rigorous research and our own lives as leading women, we have understood that women feel safer when in the presence of others because we assume that offenders will be deterred by the trust of bystander intervention. Feeling unsafe is presented in the public and political sphere as a phenomenon that affects everyone the same way, but this is ignorant of the fact that higher institutions disproportionately serve women-identifying individuals in the form of rape and rape-related, human trafficking, and domestic violence situations.
As a team we conducted 3 interviews to understand our target audience better along with a competitive analysis.
Key Quotes:
Competitive Analysis:
We looked at 4 companies that focused on increasing safety for users
Key Insights:
My research showed that women do feel more afraid in particular physical environments. Because women cannot lead their lives if they are fearful of all men all the time, in order to maintain an illusion of control over their safety they need to know where and when they may encounter 'dangerous men' in order to avoid them. To do this they develop mental images of where violence occurs which are developed through the complex interaction and cumulative effect of first- and second-hand information sources. Through using these sources of information women transfer their threat appraisal from men to dangerous environmental contexts. Women's collective definition and avoidance of these contexts therefore creates social norms about women's appropriate use of space.
Women feel safer in the actual or potential presence of others because they assume that offenders will be deterred by the possibility of bystander intervention.
We wanted to create an application that would offer users a way to connect with family and friends when their safety is compromised. Many women often fear walking or traveling alone, so our app allows users to share their location with desired contacts and play pre recorded videos to emulate a FaceTime or voice call to provide companionship when users feel alone.
Our application provides the partner when you’re alone, the safety when you’re in danger and the reliability that every voice is heard.
We created two user personas to brainstorm different feature ideas to ensure we are meeting the needs of the user
Target Audience: Women who express feelings of danger
We started by creating low fidelity screens that reflected some of the features that we wanted to include.
Our final deliverable consisted of an app that allows users to play pre recorded videos to emulate a video or voice call to provide companionship when users feel unsafe. We added panic screens that allowed uses to discreetly call 911, along with location sharing services to keep loved ones in the loop.
Overall, I had a lot of fun working on this project. Although I only worked on this project for 2 days, I learned a lot about stakeholders and how to properly researching the target audience to sufficiently design products intended for them. I also learned the importance of rapid iterations to ensure we meet the project deadline, while also designing with a purpose. Our innovative design earned us Best Overall out of 38 teams.
I hope to further expand this project in the future, where I can build a prototype and conduct usability testing.
