Client Project
My Ambar: Redesigning mobile app supporting survivors of gender-based violence.
Project Length
5 weeks
My Role
Product Designer in a team of four Designers, UX Research Lead
Methodologies
User Research, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Product Design
Tools
Figma
Overview
Sayfty is a non-profit organization, empowering women in India against gender violence. Sayfty has the vision to make the daily lives of millions of Indian women safer by empowering them to take a stance against gender violence. My Ambar which currently supports over 100,000 Indian women, is a free to use app for anyone who is looking for information, advice or support on surviving and healing from gender based violence The app aims to provide urgent help with SOS and Camouflage options, Demystify Legal Complexities by simplifying the language for it's users, laying down critical information in a form that is easy to comprehend
Current Flow
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⚠️ Busy Home Page
With multiple options to choose from, the user might feel paralyzed to make a choice especially in critical situations. Information grouping is also confusing, with categories such as “Find Help Near Me”, “Police Helpline Number”, “Emergency Contact”
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⚠️ Scattered Emergency Features
SOS button placed in the bottom navigation bar is not prominent enough to direct the user towards it while balancing engagement with the user. Weather Camouflage Icon is not immediately visible and placed at the top right corner which is not easily accessible
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⚠️ Absence of Community Support
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference
Process
User Research
I formulated the user interview guide to conduct end-to-end qualitative user research for 10 users, to understand user behaviour and identify user needs around online information consumption. Apart from this, Usability Testing of the current interface was conducted on 5 users and Heuristic Evaluation was performed by the team members to identify gaps. We created the following affinity map from our interview transcripts and testing observations, arriving at four overarching themes
Affinity Map from User Research data
Prototyping
We then proceeded to create paper prototypes using techniques such as Crazy 8s to generate ideas. Keeping our user research data in mind, we narrowed down the designs to the below mentioned lo-fi prototypes which would then be converted into hi-fi prototypes
Lo-fi prototypes (not an extensive list)
Key Design Decisions
Intuitive UX
Create a more intuitive user flow
Accessibility
Make emergency features more accessible while balancing the trade-offs between the engagement and functionality
Community
Enhance User Engagement with a Community feature
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Previous Home Screen
User feels paralyzed with choice for getting help
Weather feature to camouflage the app is unclear
SOS feature requires multiple steps to be performed by the user
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Redesign
Decluttered and condensed home screen content to 3 distinct cards
Redesigned navigation bar with ‘weather’ icon closer to the thumb
SOS functionality is reduced to one tap
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Previous Survivor Toolkit
Toolkit is informative but also verbose and might be difficult to consume for everybody.
Searching and Saving for future reference options are absent
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Redesign
Dedicated Community feature for helpful resources from experts
Video, Audio and Blog formats with search functionality
Adding resources to “My Library” for ease of future access
Reflections
Given the short time frame and broad scope, arriving at a defined problem statement and translating that into ‘Design Decisions’ was a great learning experience
The project also taught me stakeholder management, working collaboratively with designers from different backgrounds and experience levels to achieve the common goals