Safe Alarm Usability Testing
By: Kimberly Hirsch, Ryan Yenchen Liu, Vibhor Sehgal and Shefali Sastry
Introduction
In the last few weeks, we decided to focus on the problem that many people feel unsafe when they walk around alone at night in urban areas. We carried out our work through three phases: needfinding, prototyping, and usability testing.
Needfinding Stage
In order to understand the dynamics of this situation, we first completed a needfinding stage, where we interviewed people who travel in urban areas. While this was initially a broad topic, we noticed that they all reported feelings of insecurity while traveling alone and at night, causing us to transition to the question of “How might we make walking alone at night in urban areas feel more safe?” that we would eventually expand on before developing any prototypes.
Click Here to Read About our Needfinding Stage
How Might We…
…better equip people to get to their location safely?
…guide people to travel along safe routes?
…help users feel less like a target and more safe when they walk home?
…make streets safer to walk in general?
Prototyping Stage
After discovering the needs of people participating in urban travel during the preliminary interview phase, we developed four prototypes that solve some of the major questions that arose while needfinding. All of these apps have the purpose of helping the user feel more safe and secure while walking in a city, but solve this problem in different ways, whether its by making them feel less alone while traveling, helping them find the safest routes to reach their destination or providing the user with a tool to use while in trouble.
Usability Testing
Last week, we created four prototypes that aimed to allow users to feel less alone or unsafe while traveling. We would like to conduct a usability test to confirm if our design creates a better user experience.
We selected Kimberly’s design called Safe Alarm which allows users to track their friends as they walk home because it was able to integrate novel functions that are unique to our app such as the panic button, alarm setting, and trip planning.
Goals
- Gather insights about whether this app can effectively help users feel more safe when they are walking alone at night
- Determine if users would prefer the panic alarm to make a noise or just send a message to their friends
Questions
All usability tests explored the answers behind the following questions:
What do users really need when they are in trouble?
How comfortable do users feel alerting their friends that they are in trouble?
Does this app actually solve the problem of making people more safe when walking alone?
Prototype Used
Safe Alarm App
Safe alarm allows users to monitor their friend’s safety while traveling, while also giving the user the ability to inform others if they are in danger when walking.

Tasks Performed
- Set a Travel Timer
2. Manipulate travel timer settings: Set the timer, set the emergency contact(s), describe destination, turn location tracker on/off
3. Turn on your panic alarm
4. Turn off the panic alarm
5. Reach out to friends to tell them that you are in trouble
6. End your trip
7. Return to the home screen
8. Check on a friend in trouble
9. Reach out to a friend who is in trouble
10. Return back to the home screen
Link to Complete Usability Study Plan and Guide
The 4 Participants
Participant 1
Non-participants involved: Interview by Kimberly Hirsch
Description : Berkeley local, male, 23 years old. He walks around the city frequently.
Setting:
Time: November 6th at 8pm
Location: Apartment in Berkeley, CA
Device: Laptop with hi-fi prototype open in browser
Recruitment:
This participant was a friend of Kimberly Hirsch
Participant 2
Non-participants involved: Interview by Ryan Yenchen Liu
Description: A Cal’s student, male, around 25 years old. He has design background and was willing to be engaged in the test.
Setting:
Time: Nov. 6, around 6pm. It was turning dark outside, which was close to the usage scenario.
Location: In a public building, quiet and without distraction
Device: Laptop with a browser window containing the tested hi-fi prototype
Recruitment:
Direct engagement one of our TA on campus. The app’s target audience is people who are highly possibly walk alone at night. Cal’s students are a good fit for this usability test.
Participant 3
Non-participants involved: Interview by Shefali Sastry
Description: Working professional in her 30’s who lives in Berkeley and commutes using the BART from Oakland. Walks 15 minutes to get home from the Downtown Berkeley station
Setting: Grocery store aisle (Walgreen’s) right outside the BART station.
Recruitment: User was picking up groceries and I asked if she had a few minutes because she appeared to be getting home from work
Participant 4
Non-participants involved: Interview by Vibhor Sehgal
Description : A working professional, female
Setting:
Time: November 6th, Around 9pm
Location: Public cafe over coffee
Device: Laptop, Prototype open in browser
Recruitment: Through mutual connections.
Link to Usability Testing Notes, Detailed Results and Member Roles
Results
Overview of Individual Usability Testing Results
Participant 1: The user had a generally easy time interpreting the functionality of each page of this app. He thought that the buttons present all made sense and wouldn’t expect any further functionality out of this app. He did have some suggestions on how he would feel more secure using this app such as integrating pin protected screens. He said that he would definitely use this app to help a friend who was in trouble and thought that the location tracking aspect was an integral part of this app.
Participant 2: On the whole, the user regarded the app helpful if he had to walk alone. The user got a bit confused by the homepage and part of settings in the prototype, but he could still perceive how it worked and quickly performed the tasks. However, he wasn’t sure an alarm would be one of the best equipment if in trouble.
Participant 3: The user seemed to find this service useful and had a personal interest regarding its functionalities. She did not seem to have an issue with the basic functionalities of the app, and she expressed that she would like to see more features such as a feature that allows you to automatically text friends. There were a couple of major misconceptions here as well. She thought that the panic alarm would send a loud noise and start flashing instead of its actual purpose — to notify friends. Additionally, she was unsure about the overlapping capabilities about the destination and time setting feature and believes that the app should be integrated with Google Maps.
Participant 4: User liked the look, but was confused about a lot of things. They were not very sure if they would use this application because they feel it is not very different from emergency call option.
Overall Findings
1. Users can easily perceive most functionality of each page, but the overall flow and some pages can be integrated and simplified. For example, the thank you page can be just a pop-out box, and it could be less confusing to separate your own journey setting and friends’ travel status.
2. Most users were interested in and curious about the Panic Alarm. Some suggested changing alarm button to automatically send out messages instead of emitting actual noise; some possessed the other way around; and some wondered the alarm would call 911. It seems those buttons have some overlapping implications and could be further combined, since you would not have much time to react in an emergency situation.
3. Users’ feedback shows that there is a debate about whether the app makes them actually safe or feel safe. There was a question about how well a user would be able to react if they are in the middle of a situation and what the difference is between this app and just calling 911. We would like to further dig into it what people need when it comes to personal safety.
“I like that you get to have a set contact, god forbid anything happens you know someone would be alerted, this is why the panic alarm should be pin protected”
“I wouldn’t want an actual alarm to go off, I think that this would make me quite exasperated”
“How is this different from Emergency Calling?”
Heuristic Evaluation: 9vagate
Taking a step away from the Safe Alarm app, we wanted to explore the ease of interactivity of the 9vagate app, which we had also developed during the prototyping phase. 9vagate is an app designed to collect street data and calculate safety level of each of these streets for users, recommending a safe route, as well as offering various means of traveling to balance cost, time, and safety. Each group member performed a heuristic evaluation on this app to determine any usability problems within the 9vagate interfaces.
Heuristic Evaluation Takeaways
- Satellite mapping is confusing and should be more clear
- Details about each path is helpful and should be expanded upon using data from other app users
- The user should be able to see real-time updates about their trip
