Women Security App

Abstract

We are probably living in the worst time our modern society has ever seen in terms of women's security. We aim to make women feel as strong as ever and strong enough to fight the parasites of our society, strong enough to fight the odds, strong enough to protect themselves against any sexual assaults. We aim at giving power to those without whom we cease to exist. Our idea is to design a system which shall make every place and every hour safer for women again.

A system which shall re-establish how very gregarious mankind is. This system shall geotag and send SOS alert to the nearest police station, close contacts and also alert people in and around the venue of the crime, everything just at a click of a button. The idea is to make up for the time it takes police to arrive at the location.

We are focusing on building an effective, fast and reliant system to make the women of India feel safe and empowered.

Our platform will act as a 24/7 active help and companion for women so that they don't ever feel that they are alone in the middle of a crisis situation. It will unite and enable the citizens of India and the police to work towards a common problem. This tool will act as eyes and ears for the police and help them in preventing crimes against women. This tool has been designed in a manner that it covers the various situations a woman can be stuck in like when she is alone or when she is in a crowded place or when she is in public transport etc.

Introduction

Design thinking is an iterative approach to problem solving that intentionally seeks out people with different perspectives, knowledge, skills and experience and has them work together to create a practical solution for a real-world problem.

Design thinking uses a process-based approach to solve problems and like any process, it involves a series of steps that are carried out in a particular order to achieve a goal. In this case, the goal is to identify a solution that is capable of succeeding, can be carried out in a timely manner and is likely to be accepted by all stakeholders.

The five steps in design thinking are empathize, define, ideate prototype and test.

2.AEIOU Sheet

In Design engineering-1A the AEIOU canvas is divided into 5 sections. They are:

• A-Activity
• E-Environment
• I-Interactions
• O-Object
• U-Users

Domain: Women Security

Activity:

• General Impressions/Observations
• Women going to market.
• Children playing in gardens/parks.
• Girls coming from tuition/schools.
• Women going to or coming from work at late at night.

Special notes

During our observation, we observed that most of women feel insecure while traveling alone during late nights.

Some independent women feared or felt insecure while talking with strangers and also for asking any kind of help.

[E] Environment:

• General Observations/Impressions
• Crimes on women mostly occurring during night.
• Festivals celebrated publicly often lead to crimes against women.
• Most crimes likely to occur at night clubs and bars.
• Public transport s are not safe for women at night.
• Villages which are solitary aren't safe.
• Crowded work place.
• Unhygienic remote areas of cities.

Special notes

The work place or companies which run at night do not offer any kind of security to women.

[I]Interaction

• General Observations/Impressions
• Females interacting with auto/cab drivers.
• Women asking to strangers for directions.
• Women bargaining with street vendors.
• Women bargaining with cab/auto drivers for fare amount.

[O] Object:

• General Observations/Impressions
• Public places
• Offices
• Gardens/Parks
• Trains/Buses/cabs, any public transport.

[U] User:

• General Observartions/Impressions
• Victim
• Police
• Guardians/Parents
• Cab drivers

Mind-Mapping

A mind map is a diagram that is ideal for brainstorming, planning, information gathering, data presentation, and many other uses.

What makes a mind map so effective is that it allows us to use both sides of our brains at once. The left side of the brain controls logic, analytics, and details. It is very structured and organized. The right side is creative, imaginative, and likes to think freely. In business when someone says "think outside the box," what they really mean is to move away from the left side of your brain for a while and allow your brain's right side to daydream, explore, and think about the "bigger picture."

This is when a mind map can be an invaluable tool. Rather than using a lined note pad and making lists, a mind map allows more creative thought processes to surface.

But it doesn't do this at the expense of the logical left half of the brain. A mind map also allows thoughts and ideas no matter how imaginative they might be to be organized in a thoughtful and logical way.

A mind map encourages a "mind meld" of the entire brain.

Empathy Canvas

Empathy canvas is the canvas where designer has to observe and understand the emotional needs of the users, and on the basis of empathy of user he will think of the solution. An empathy canvas is tool which helps us summarized our observation and takes out unexpected ideas with no restriction and any bound.

- Here, USER is who is going to use our solution, research or analysis.

In this stage, we find the various users which are directly or indirectly related to our project.

For example:

Women going for work, victim, school/college going girls

- In ACTIVITIES session we describe daily routine of user.

For example: Women going to garden, waiting for bus, interacting with street vendors or small children playing in garden.

- In STORY BOARDING we write 4-5 incidents in life of users based on our observation of users.

For example:

A girl named Riya was once travelling through bus from her college. She always takes two buses to travel from her home to school and vice versa. She leaves college at around 4:00pm. She takes her first bus at 4:15pm and the 2nd bus that she takes comes on 5:00pm in a rural area. The bus stop is far away from urban area. Once she missed one of the buses and had to wait for an hour. Later she realized that the bus she was waiting for wouldn't come. She saw a car coming by and asked for lift. There were 3 men in the car. Riya said that they were trying to sexually abuse her along the way but somehow she managed to avoid it. But of course she felt very bad about that day.

Ideation canvas

Ideation is a creative process of generating, developing and communication new ideas, where an idea is understood as basic element of thought that can be visual concrete or abstract.

Ideation comprises all stages of thought cycle, from innovation, to development, to actualization.

An ideation canvas is a rough wide sheet where ideas can be stretched in to any limits or dimensions. Ideation session isn't aimed at finding solution to the defined problem. But its aim is to define the best possible problem and stretch out its possible scope.

Users

We write down distinct people we can think of or we are interested to solve problem.

For example:

Women going for work and jobs, small children, school/college going girls.

Activities

We write down whatever every segment of people do. Activities we had identified at empathy stage.

For example:

Women going to garden/Park, talking with street vendors, children playing in garden/park.

Situation /context/location

Every above mention activity can be done in different situation, location or context.

In short, when / why / where many activities that user does can vary depending upon changes in situation, location or context.

For example:

We do not have any idea about condition surrounding to women whether it's safe or not.

Props/Possible Solution

We note down the objects, technologies or solutions which may be possible outcomes to our idea/ challenge.

The prop need to be related as it is always randomness that helps in finding new ideas.

For example:

• Make them aware about such crimes and martial arts (for self defense).
• Provide safety equipment like pepper spray, pocket knife, tazer, etc.
• More strict punishment to culprit such as death sentence.
• Providing basic help as soon as possible.

Product Development Canvas

This exercise is meant for giving strategic orientation to the project of each team so that it achieves it true goal as defined by the previous canvas exercise. This exercise is more about developing strategy for the proposed product/ solution design, after the team has successfully attempt the ideation process and has incorporated inputs from all stakeholders.

A product development canvas is the ground where in the best possible ideas after the ideation session are pitched and nurtured to develop.

People

We make a segment more focus. We note down the kind of people we have in mind while developing the product and also the people for whom we resolving the problem.

People:

• Culprit
• Victim
• Guardian
• Police
• Purpose

The section should answer the following question: what is the broad purpose of our product? What problem sectors we want to target broadly or specifically?

For example:

• To provide security for women against harassment and crimes.
• To make the parent/guardian aware about their child that she is in danger and needs help ASAP.
• To inform the concerned and guardians of the victim ASAP.
• To equip the women/student with basic self defense tool.

Product functions

Product function delivered the product experience. We convert the product experience into function for our product/ services. What function our product should perform to meet the customer experience we have just identified in product experience? Mostly the user experience will be our product function.

For example:

• Activates instantly on tapping the button.
• Reports to the concerned guardians about the threat.
• Informs the nearest police station with help of cloud.

Product features

Features power the product functions we find product features that will delivered the functions we have identified.

Features included like:

• GPS and location based service.
• Provides instant help.
• Sends the address of yours to the concerned and guardians.
• Sends your address to police station nearest to your location.

Product experience

We focused on what the customer feel about a product and find out their problems. Note down their key experience points their wish list and the improvement sought.

• Quick access.
• Highly secured.
• Reject / Retain / Redesign

As per the feedback received from the users/stakeholders student learns need to modify their design and further action plan. In case, the whole thing needs to be relooked it has to be iterated with new prospective.

Retain what uses like, reject what they don't want and redesign what can be improved to meet the user challenges. Run the reject/ redesign / retain on the functions first and then if required on individual feature to find how well they are powering the function of our product.

Prototype

The users need to register themselves on the app by creating their own account. This app service shall be a one-time registration; the users are required to fill in their basic details at the time of registration. After making an account user would be qualified to use all the services intended to protect and empower them. Services include an automated distress SOS to the nearest police station and to her emergency contacts, not only this the app will also automatically send in distress signals to the nearby people within a specified radius with a live location. The user can also lodge an FIR against the alleged person which shall be geotagged on the digital map and time stamped. We also look forward to ensure women safety in public transport, we propose that every public transport is it a bus, cab or an auto rickshaw shall be fitted with a GPS device which will be monitored by the police at all times.

The GPS monitoring shall be locally distributed among the police and their mobile patrolling units i.e., they will be monitoring only over a certain area which is within their reach depending upon their standing location. The marker color on the digital map will change to red once any user travelling in that particular vehicle clicks on the panic button in the app. Every public transport must be fitted with a CCTV camera the footage of which will be visible to the police in case the marker goes red. The live location of the vehicle will help the police to track them down efficiently and faster, apart from this vehicles will also be fitted with a siren which shall go off under such circumstances and only the police or the over watch authority can put them off.

On the user app, there will be a navigation drawer which shall hold the basic details of the user and the screen other than that shall hold only one big button which shall be the panic button.

Panic Button: On clicking this button the app sends in a distress message and a live location of the user to the nearest police station and to the ones selected as "close contacts". The app will also send in a distress message and a live location link to all mobile phones then residing within a given radius from the location of the user. In case the user clicks the button while in a public transport, the system recognizes the vehicle and marks it red on the map which is being monitored by the police.

Navigation Drawer: The user can change their basic information and add/change their close contacts in this drawer.

The concerned authorities will be operating using a web portal where they shall have access to the digital map for user locations and to monitor public transport locations and shall be authorized to view the live CCTV footage of any vehicle at any point of time. Police can acknowledge their arrival to a user when a distress call arises in their watch.

Conclusion

The aim of this project is to possibly reduce the crime against females. In this era where safety is the first factor that is concerned about the most, this app shall help females to create a buzz when something wrong happens or any accident takes place.

This app will definitely create more awareness and helpline facilities when a woman is in trouble and hence aiming on decreasing the rate of crimes.