StreetGuard

Our Project

Victims of street harassment often feel helpless, frozen, and confused. Many don't know how to respond to their situation, and feel powerless as a result. We want to help empower these victims by creating an app to promote their safety.

Through our interviews, observations and secondary research, we realized just how common and traumatic street harassment is. The interviewees expressed disappointment at a lack of current technological solutions, feeling that the apps currently on the market compromise their privacy, lack desired features, or are not discreet. We used these concerns to inform our design goals.

When creating our prototype, we wanted to provide users with the ability to quickly respond to threats in multiple different ways without drawing unnecessary attention. We created a design that allows users to send a silent police alert, and get help from their emergency contacts via location sharing, phone calls, and/or pre-written text messages, all from any screen in the app. The app also provides a map of nearby safe locations, and written instructions on how to handle various street harassment situations.

Big Points

• Alert police and emergency contacts from any screen in the app.
  
• Get written instructions on how to respond to street harassment.
  
• View and navigate to nearby safe locations from a map.
  
• Discreet, dark mode design.