Campa

A mobile app designed for students safety within or outside of the university campus. By using this app anyone can immediately report inappropriate incidents by pressing a one tap emergency button in their app notifying campus police dispatch of their GPS location, identity and contact information, and starting a phone conversation with dispatch. It also sends an alert message to saved contacts within the app. The app allows users to access information of campus police, other emergency, health care and counseling numbers, along with links to crime prevention tips and other relevant campus information

Project Type: University in-house project
Timeframe: January 2016 - May 2016 (5 months)
Design Tools: Balsamiq, Omnigraffle, Adobe XD, Sketch 3, InVision Studio
Activities: Requirement Gathering, User Research, Team Leadership, Presentations
Role & Responsibilities: UX lead designer on a team of 3

The Problem

“Students have a right to learn without fear. Learning in a safe and healthy environment is a foundational requirement for a successful education. Yet in communities across the country, the fundamental promise to protect students has been fractured by campus and gun violence. This must change.”

- NAIS Statement on Student and School Safety

According to the report published by The National Center for Victims of Crime

• Schools and post-secondary campuses are relatively safe places. However, victimization does occur, and the risks vary by context.

• Given the amount of time that young people spend at school, victimizations occurring there are an important subset of crime.

• Adolescents, for example, experience more violent victimizations at school but more serious violent victimizations outside of school (violent victimization encompasses hazing, rape, sexual assault, robbery, vandalism, suicide, aggravated assault, and simple assault. Serious violent victimization excludes simple assault).

• Stalking victimization rates among women in college are higher than those in the general population; concerns over reporting and preventing this and other violence against women—in particular, rape and sexual assault—have led to a greater focus on campus crime by administrators and policy makers.

• Regardless of age, students who are victimized often have their physical and emotional well-being negatively affected, as well as their ability to learn.

Did you know?

In the previous 12 months (2015 - 2016) of the Youth Risk Behavior survey girls were more likely than boys to not attend school due to safety concerns.

of students had been in a physical fight (in or out of school)

of students were offered, sold or given, illegal drugs on school property

The Solution

To overcome all the challenges mentioned above, we designed Campa - a mobile app that every university student should have to feel more safer while being on campus or even outside of it. Campa not only allows students to feel secure but it also helps parents feel the same way. Parents are less likely to be worried by knowing the fact that their children are using Campa.

Emergency Alerts

Emergency Alert Button (Can be activated by tapping the power button 3 times in a quick succession)

Self-Defense Tutorials

Self-defense video/audio tutorials along with some web references on "how to protect yourself?"

Emergency 911

Easily customizable emergency contact list with ability to video call. Immediate one tap call to 911

Weather & News Alerts

Daily weather and news alerts to help you take appropriate measures in advance

Safety Programs

Everyday safety checklist and reminders. Easy access and availability to Campus Security programs.

Buzzer, S.O.S. & Reports

Emergency buzzer and flash lights (S.O.S.) signals for regions with weak or low networks

The Research

We did rigorous user research before we started working on any of the designs. Our research included different phases such as surveys, one-on-one interviews, affinity diagram mapping, competitive & comparative analysis, user personas, user flow diagrams, usability studies, etc. and followed a below generalized double diamond UX design process.

Initial Survey

Conducted a short survey to gather all the necessary details to kick-start this project. The response to the survey was overwhelming.

Conducted a series of one-on-one interviews with targeted users to understand their app behaviors and patterns as well as to get more insights on their past personal experiences.

Affinity Mapping

As a part of our brainstorming sessions, we created an affinity mapping diagram to gather large amounts of data and later on organized them into groups and themes based on their relationships.

According to the document prepared by the National Center for Campus Public Safety, we did competitive as well as comparative analysis -

• To understand where our product or service stands in the market

• To inform the design process

• To know the strengths and weaknesses of our competition

• To have reliable evidence when making any product changes

• To focus our efforts in a target market

Based on user research, we created a couple of personas that we referred throughout the next design phases.

Based on the available user research, mapped out the flow diagram of the app.

Iterated at least 30 low fidelity wireframe sketches to come up with the MVP (minimum viable product) of the project.

Designed medium and high fidelity wireframes before moving to the final design phase.

Testing is one of the most important phases of the UX design process, so usability testing methodologies were applied.

Based on Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability principles in human-computer interaction (HCI), successfully conducted 13 usability tests.

Some of the UI designs designed using Adobe XD, Sketch and Photoshop.

This app was specifically built for Pace University, New York students and was released in the beta version. I’d love to scale this project to a level where it is available to all the universities in the United States and ultimately all across the globe to eradicate campus violence.

Special thanks to all my other team members and all of the users who contributed towards the successful delivery of this project.