The Challenge

The CTA does not have its own app, let alone an app for safety. The CTA does not provide a safe way to confront a threat. It is so widely used in Chicago, but commuters do not have a clear idea of what to do in a threatening situation. 

Currently on the CTA, there is an emergency call button to contact the conductor.  The conductor can then respond over the loudspeaker to see what the problem is, but this is loud and calls attention that could potentially have undesired consequences. If there is an incident, commuters want to avoid confronting the perpetrator and escalating the situation. Victims themselves may also feel embarrassed to ask for help.

Academic Research

One of the key barriers to bystander intervention is The Bystander Effect. There are three key components to the Bystander Effect which include dividing responsibility, fear of being judged by others when acting publicly, and reliance on overt actions of others when defining ambiguous situations. The greater the social cohesion among individuals, the greater the chance of interference. 

Social Proof

We discovered social proof as the concept that to promote a behavior, first you have to normalize and present it as a social norm to get people involved so that if they feel like part of group they're much more likely to act together. 

Personas

Jesse and Rachel have each experienced unpleasant events on the CTA. Our interviews with both of them gave us great insight into how people respond in threatening situations both during and after the fact, whether that’s leaning on the community or changing travel routes altogether. They are the ideal users for this app based on their needs. 

User Needs

Based off of the research we conducted and users we interviewed, we narrowed down our user needs to the following:

Design Process

Design Principles

• Design for Safety

• Design for Privacy

• Least Effort

• Fit for Purpose

• Alert bystanders and authorities

• Influence in the Community

Solution

We believe that by creating a covert communication app that is awareness and community-centric for victims or witnesses of crime on the CTA L Train, we will achieve a safer commute for our users.

In the app, the user first selects whether he/she is a victim or a bystander of an incident. We decided that the bystander would be led to a page where they can quickly choose what type of incident they see, send out an alert to people in the same train car, and be able to chat about it in a community page. The victim, in a much more urgent situation, would skip these steps and head straight to the community chat to alert others and report the incident, since we found how in so many cases victims are afraid to confront the perpetrator.

When building our sitemap, we had to keep in mind the sense of urgency. We did not want to give users too many options of what to do, since they would be in a situation where they need to react quickly.

This is user flow from the perspective of a bystander of an incident inside the train car that the situation occurs in. 

We created this storyboard to depict the three main users that are involved from when an incident is witnessed through getting help. The bystander reports the problem which sends an alert to passengers in the same car. Once another passenger verifies the report, an alert is sent to the next car over, as to not draw attention and create more danger in the initial car. Someone in the next car can then view the problem, contact the conductor, and this calms down the witnesses in the first car to know help is on the way.

Sketches

In the initial sketches, we decided that the options for the first page should be “I see something” and “I need help”. After testing with users, we found that the copy was a bit confusing and users took too much time deciding which one to pick, which contradicts the purposes of the app.

Wireframes

In the wireframes, we changed the copy to “Someone Needs Help” and “I Need Help Now”. We also had a verify button in the navigation of the community board throughout the app, which we realized doesn’t actually work when programming an app. 

Hi-Fidelity Mockup

As the visual desiger, I decided that I would pick similar colors to those of the CTA website so that the brands align visually. I also implemented black as the background for the pages instead of white or a lighter color so that it wouldn’t display harshly and draw attention in a situation where users need to be covert. The copy we finally ended up with for the starting page is "Alert Community" for the bystander and "I Need Help" for the victim. 

Next Steps

With more time, I would push this app to expand to safety features on both the platform and parking lots (where there is lots of car theft). We would also implement grassroots campaigns for cleaning up the trains, and have a way to directly contact the conductor through the sensor of each car, still without drawing attention.

Reflection

My favorite part about this project was the fact that the main goal was to help people. Learning such shocking statistics and growing crime rates, I became very passionate about figuring out how to truly help commuters feel safer in their everyday lives. This is something that I hope to do more of in my future UX design work.

Through working with a group of five, I learned how important it is to have strong communication among the team, be organized with a timeline in a tight deadline, and articulate ideas and findings precisely and clearly.