Exploring the design of a Human-Centered safety-focused navigation application for solo-women travellers
Author
Term
4. term
Publication year
2025
Submitted on
2025-06-02
Pages
4875
Abstract
The purpose of the research is to understand how a human-centered safe navigation application can be designed for the needs of solo women travellers to support them in their travel journeys, and how safety-data can be integrated in a useful and desirable way. The research starts with a literature review that revealed the gap of existing safety applications for solo women travellers, being based on the actual needs of the user group. The research then follows a design thinking process, starting with empathising with the users with semi-structured interviews to understand their safety needs, concerns and strategies in various travel scenarios, their perceptions on data-types and the communication and usage of those. It then uses thematic analysis and journey maps to analyse the data, leading to user insights presented in themes, and three travel journeys with insights, covering different scenarios. The following sections cover the formulation of a problem statement, opportunity identification, and the ideation and design concept creation of a safe navigation application, that will be tested with users from the target group. The main findings show users' main needs and pain points when it comes to safety, particularly around planning and taking confident decisions, their strong preferences for women-generated reviews, and their various opinions and preferences for the display, interaction and communication of crime-data.
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