SafeZone
Safety on the mind, safety on the map
Women deserve safe travels. While we can’t fix the world’s problems in one fell swoop, we can arm women with the information they need to make informed, data-driven decisions, and to feel more secure and confident in their travel planning. SafeZone is a new data layer we created for Google Maps that uses a score-based review system, providing users with safety information about neighborhoods.
Time frame:
Sep–Dec, 2022
Teammates:
Jacob Chen
Alana Levene
Yongwen Dai
My role:
UX Design+Research
Skills:
User Research
Storyboarding
Prototyping
User Testing
A new safety layer on Google Maps that provide aggregated safety information about neighborhoods
SOLUTION
Safety considerations are a driving force for women in selecting travel destinations. Female solo traveler lean on the adventurous side, but safety is variable in every decision–from choosing accommodation to finding a bar to go at night in a particular neighborhood. The lack of reliable and hyperlocal information of a given place creates barrier to exploration. And if they can't explore, this defeats the purpose of traveling.
PROBLEM
73% of women who travel solo worry about their personal safety
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How might we help women feel confident that their travel plans meet their safety considerations?
Users can filter reviews by identity, preference, and other personal concerns. The flexibility to filter based on personal concerns supports inclusivity while helping people decide where to go before and during a trip.
Select cities or neighborhoods that you’re interested in. Open the list view to see how they compare.
SafeZone is a geographical representation of safety. It maps “safety scores” of cities and neighborhoods based on government published data and crowdsourced, user-submitted reviews.
DECISION MAKING
COMMUNITY
LOCALITY
Synthesizing key findings
Stage 2
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY | AFFINITY CLUSTERING
For your best viewing experience and to see the full design process, please view on desktop:) If you can't access desktop right now, here's an overview below
What problems do people face in travel planning?
After conducting extensive research on social media, travel websites, research papers, and interviews to gather data on travel planning, we identified a prevalent issue: safety concerns. Recognizing the significance of this problem, we chose to narrow our focus to female travelers, considering their general vulnerability and the emerging opportunities within this group.
Travel Planning
How might we help women in mitigating safety concerns when planning their travel experiences
Design Goals
Stage 3
Framing the problem scope
Stage 1
DESKTOP RESEARCH | USER INTERVIEW | DATA ANALYSIS
For your best viewing experience and to see the full design process, please view on desktop:) If you can't access desktop right now, here's an overview below
“Choosing a safe accommodation to me is a big factor [in travel planning]”
"Planning for safe accomodation always concern me--I want to live in a safe neighborhoods when traveling alone!"
We conducted direct storytelling with 8 women who have solo traveled before to recall past experiences. The goal was to understand what are some main safety concerns and how solo female travelers gather info to arrive at risk assessment for traveling
People perceive safety differently
A key finding reveals that female travelers face difficulty in accurately assessing the level of risk associated with a specific destination due to the absence of contextual information in online safety resources.
How do female travelers assess risks?
To better understand how travelers assess risks in planning, we conducted an affinity clustering session. This methodology allowed us to discover and create patterns among various findings, and group them by themes following a hierarchy from low to the highest level. From categorizing users’ pain points, we generated three main insights:
People rely on social circles to increase their perceived level of safety
Insight 1
Travelers familiarity with a destination determines how they plan their trip
Insight 3
Words of mouth carry the most weight as the source of information
Insight 2
For your best viewing experience and to see the full design process, please view on desktop:) If you can't access desktop right now, here's an overview below
“Choosing a safe accommodation to me is a big factor [in travel planning]”
"Planning for safe accomodation always concern me--I want to live in a safe neighborhoods when traveling alone!"
We conducted direct storytelling with 8 women who have solo traveled before to recall past experiences. The goal was to understand what are some main safety concerns and how solo female travelers gather info to arrive at risk assessment for traveling
People perceive safety differently
A key finding reveals that female travelers face difficulty in accurately assessing the level of risk associated with a specific destination due to the absence of contextual information in online safety resources.
How do female travelers assess risks?
To better understand how travelers assess risks in planning, we conducted an affinity clustering session. This methodology allowed us to discover and create patterns among various findings, and group them by themes following a hierarchy from low to the highest level. From categorizing users’ pain points, we generated three main insights:
People rely on social circles to increase their perceived level of safety
Insight 1
Words of mouth carry the most weight as the source of information
Insight 2
Travelers' familiarity with a destination determines how they plan their trips