FOR YOUR SAFE JOURNEY

HOODWITH - A safety app for female users

Peter, 28, saw his girlfriend press 112 on her phone every night on the way home because it was dark and scary in the alley. Women who get home alone late at night are bound to be more "nervous" than men. Compared to Western countries, Korea is said to be safe on the way home because streetlights and CCTVs are installed everywhere, but the way home late at night passing through alleys still makes Korean women in their 20s and 30s "feel scared". Can't we create a safer and more inclusive society?

ABOUT THE PROJECT

BACKGROUND

A Startup Team, HOODWITH wanted to create a safer and more inclusive society through app services. To this end, we wondered if there was a way to prevent crimes against women and children in the interest of many people. Furthermore, we find that public administrative services are somewhat lacking in efficiency and access to information. Through visiting interviews with acquaintances, we learned that the efficiency of district official work is reduced due to repeated requests to resolve complaints about living inconveniences. There is a minimal way to know information about incidents/accidents and inconveniences in handling situations.

GOAL

By experiencing the above problems, the following two development goals were set as the team's mission.
1. Efforts should be made to increase the safety of women in their residential areas (Gender Equality).
2. Innovation into an inclusive and safe community (Sustainable Cities and Communities)

TIMELINE

8 months

ROLE

Design Lead
User Experience Design
User Interface Design

TEAM

Design Lead - Joyce Heo

Management - Gideuk Park

Marketing - Hyunbin Jo

Front-end Development - Seungsik Woo

Back-end Development - Gihun Lee

PRODUCT DESIGN PROCESSES

MARKET RESEARCH

01 UX
RESEARCH

02 HUNTING
PAIN POINTS

03 IDEATION
CONCEPT SKETCH

04 WIREFRAMING

05 TESTING

06 ANALYSIS

07 DESIGN MODIFICATION

08 MARKET RESEARCH

EXPLORE

01 COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Company/Services	APOST	CITIZEN	HOODWITH
Reward	O	X	O
Process Status	X	O	O
Community	O	X	O
Accident Notification	X	O	O
Report Location	O	O	O
Map	O	O	O
General Announcement Notification	O	X	O
Criminal Notification	X	O	O

Field Studies

- Each company is specialized in services by area. (APOST is centred on general complaints, and CITIZEN is focused on crime)
- Leading companies pay rewards with cash points to induce user participation and occupy the market primarily by the service sector.
- HOODWITH has a clear advantage in the scope of services over the competitors.
- Functionality is essential to determine the authenticity of the generated content. Development of fact-checking algorithms through analysis of collected data is necessary.
- Through partnership cooperation with local governments and related organizations, the service's advantage can be gained through differentiation such as automation of processing report system, crime notification, and immediate anonymous reporting feature.
- Due to the nature of community services, it may be difficult to move from existing services to our new service platform, but there is an opportunity to increase market share by specializing the scope of services or by adding game elements if necessary.

USER EXPERIENCE
RESEARCH

EXPLORE

02 USER JOURNEY MAP
Behavioral Data

PHARSES

1

2

3

4

CIVIL COMPLAINTS

EMOTIONS/TOUCHPOINTS

Citizens A, B, and C wait for the results of the processing. They frequently ask the district office about the processing status.

Citizen A saw the street lamp being turned off. Complaints of the Citizen A received at the district office.

Citizen B and Citizen C also witnessed the street lamp being turned off. Complaints from the Citizen B and C received at the district office due to the same problem.

Redundant complaints reduced the efficiency of the district office work performance.

CRIME

Citizen B, a neighbour, found the incident too late. B reports to the police. The investigation is difficult because the perpetrators have already fled.

In a quiet alleyway, a violent incident occurred to Citizen A.

Citizen A thinks of a way to ask for help in an emergency, but recognizes that it is difficult to report to 112.

Violence intensifies in the midst of hesitation.

SAFETY

Similar accidents frequently occur in the same area.

A bicycle and a car collided in an accident-prone area.

Traffic is under control and in congestion.

Ambulance dispatches. The accident is being handled.

HUNTING
PAIN POINTS

EXPLORE

03 PAIN POINTS

CIVIL
COMPLAINTS

CRIME

SAFETY

- Today's reality in criminal issue is that unless you witness a crime or see/hear from the media, people tend to be indifferent to their neighbors. It is difficult to identify witnesses in a quiet and dark place without CCTV or streetlights.

- In the event of an accident, only those near the accident site can notice the progress of the process. If they are not witnesses, people who experience traffic jams caused by the accident will experience inconvenience unexpectedly because they will not be able to know the cause of traffic congestion.

- Reduced work efficiency of the civil office due to overlapping complaints.

- Long time of waiting caused by the unknown progress of the handling of the civil office after the civil complaints

OPPORTUNITIES

CIVIL
COMPLAINTS

How about collecting complaints and opinions reported by citizens in a separate space so that the civil complaints can be submitted to the civil office at once? Wouldn't it be easier for both citizens and the civil office managers to share and grasp all the complaints and see the status of the progress in their residential areas?

CRIME

If a crime is suspected due to outside noise, or if an act of violence is witnessed, wouldn't it be possible for the local community to be interested in protecting local residents and preventing serious crimes by quietly and quickly signalling the occurrence of the incident?

SAFETY

In the event of an accident, why don't we immediately notify those who are near the area that the accident has occurred? If we can check the current status of the progress of the accident, wouldn't we be able to prepare for the inconvenience of traffic jams in advance? Wouldn't it be possible to create a safer society if each region analyzes safety accidents and shares information on accident analysis and prevention methods?

IDEATION
CONCEPT SKETCH

EXPLORE

04 KEY FEATURES

CIVIL COMPLAINTS

Report civil complaints such as street lamp installation, street odour, CCTV installation, and a number of street patrols.
Share with nearby users.
Click the "LIKE" button for the content. Therefore, it will be easy to identify the number of civil complaints viewed as positive opinions.

CRIME

Mark and report the location of criminal damage or sightings in order to notify nearby users about the criminal incident.
The comment function allows the users to communicate the progress or the result of the report.

SAFETY

Geofence* and notify users within a 500-meter radius of the surrounding area when a location is reported as a fire, emergency, or traffic accident.
The progress of the accident will be announced based on the data from the 119 General Situation Room.

*Geofence is a compound work of “geography” and “fence”, a technique for creating virtual boundaries or zones based on actual locations.

WIREFRAMING - MVP

EXPLORE

05

We decided to conduct concept testing first to verify that the concept and direction we set are suitable for the needs of the target user segment. We have implemented a Minimum Viable Product(MVP) which means the only minimum features such as the category including safety incidents, crimes, and civil complaints. Most importantly, we added the marking function that can be reported after entering the reporting contents.

TESTING

EXPLORE

06 CONCEPT TESTING

FEEDBACK

USER FEEDBACK
Attitudinal Data

The above content is a collection of considerable feedback received from one male and four female participants from a total number of 20 participants aged between their 20s to 30s.

ANALYSIS

LISTEN

07 POSITIVE FEEDBACK

The automatic push notification function will be useful for users located in nearby areas. With the push notification, it would be convenient for users because they can receive the accident or incident information automatically before turning on the app themselves.

PROBLEMS

Long loading time(more than 15 seconds) and bugs depending on the access timing.
This issue was caused by insufficient capacity and instability due to the use of a low-quality website-building service.
Concerns about indiscriminate markers such as too many markings at a location or abuse of false reports.
The possibility of regional disputes due to worsening competition for rewards.

QUESTIONS

Whether the crime report is linked to police 112 quickly, "will it be possible for the general public to solve the crime just because they reported?"
If a user filed a complaint requesting the installation of a street lamp at a location through marking, "how does the progress relates to marking? If there is no guarantee that it will be improved after reporting, it is unlikely to take time and effort to fill out the report form."
If a crime-related report is made through marking, "should the user who reported cooperate with the police investigation? I'm a little burdened because I'm afraid I'll get on bad terms with my neighbours."
"How are you going to generate revenue? And how do you plan to increase traffic?"

NEW NEEDS

"I hope there is a function that can attach pictures when reporting. Wouldn't you be able to find your lost pet, even a card or wallet?"

DESIGN MODIFICATION

IMPROVE

08 CHANGES IN DIRECTION

The marking feature reported by the users is likely to be deleted due to the high risk of unreliable reports. Instead, we use government-supported police and fire safety-related open sources to analyze the rates of crime, and fire/traffic accidents by region and display safety scores internally.
Delete civil complaints, crimes, and safety accident markers. Instead, display CCTVs and streetlights on the map to encourage users to find a safe environment on their way home late at night.
Use a dark mode map that is more user-friendly to use on the way home late at night. The street lights are marked as yellow lights. Redesign the entire interface to dark mode.
Equip with a feature to share the route on the way home with friends. Let the users register their boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse/parent as a friend to inform them of the route home in real time. Therefore, it reduces the fear of returning home late at night.
Expanding target users from women in their 20s and 30s to overseas travellers visiting Korea. For this reason, the NAVER login linkage function was deleted and changed to Apple login to attract overseas travellers.
Introduced a launching event for the initial influx of users. To view safety score data, 30 days discount coupon is provided.