Ameigo
There is no denying that the rate of crime has recently increased not only among women but also among children. People struggle because they feel unsafe in some settings, especially when alone.
Ameigo was initially thought of to be a safety app, kind of like a more productive version of Find My Friends. We quickly realized that this application would be helpful in emergencies and regular day-to-day experiences.
We wondered, "What if you could instantly feel safer when checking in with your loved ones in one click?"
UX Designer
Visual Designer
Information Architect
User Researcher
My Role
Responsibilities included:
Primary and secondary research
Creating personas, workflows, epics, and user stories
Structuring the app's information to streamline the user experience
Creating and refining the app's visual components
Creating and maintaining style guides
User and competitor research
Low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes
High-fidelity designs and asset creation
Design workflow management
Research
At the beginning of our project, our team filled out the lean canvas to look at the many different perspectives around GPS tracking in mobile devices. The Lean Canvas provided the initial alignment for the Ameigo app.
Lean Canvas:
Key Findings:
The biggest opportunity was a more community-based, proactive app with auto-alerts, instead of the standard reactive model.
Feature-Based Competitive Analysis:
After getting a grasp of who our primary user was, I researched the features competitors offered and the gaps in their programs. Each team member downloaded and reviewed two competing apps, then reported back. We compared features to address the biggest gaps.
Positive Findings:
All competitors offered a way to share your location with other users of the app.
Most let users check in with others and send SOS messages to first responders.
All supported an admin/guardian role when minors used the app.
Gaps from Competitors:
Most offered no guidance on how to share your location or request it from others.
None let you group individuals and save them so they could all be alerted at once.
Most treated location sharing and notifications as a small share of their programming, letting secondary features (roadside services, usage tracking) get in the way of the core action.
The team built an Empathy Map to better understand our primary user and their concerns about their own safety and their loved ones'. It helped us articulate what we knew about our users, create a shared understanding of their needs, and make decisions.
Empathy Maps:
Affinity Diagram of Primary User:
The Affinity Diagram let the stakeholders and me confirm our theory: overall feelings of loneliness and lack of safety were a major opportunity for the project.
Key Findings:
Users worry about friends and family when they know they're out at night.
Users feel unsafe alone in public at night (parking lots, bars, a nightly jog).
Users would feel better with roadside assistance when they're alone.
After the empathy map gave us initial alignment, I ran user interviews to understand users' wants and needs. I wrote a discussion guide, interviewed four potential Ameigo customers, and compiled the findings into research-based personas.
User Interviews:
Key Findings:
Young adults wanted to spot friends in their vicinity using AR/VR.
Parents wanted to know where their children were and set a mileage or curfew radius.
Adults wanted to share a destination with friends and family to navigate safely and be tracked along the way.
After the interviews, I built three user personas to personify the research. With these core users in mind, we moved forward knowing who we were designing for and what they needed.
User Personas:
Design
After research, I wrote epics and user stories to shape the product's direction. Three themes emerged:
Epic and User Stories:
Sharing your location: share/stop sharing current location; see friends or family within a walkable area; admin sets a mile radius for a junior user.
Sending and receiving alerts: send pre-set messages and alerts to a safety group; receive traffic alerts; junior users alerted near their radius or curfew.
Creating "safety groups": invite from phone contacts, Gmail, and Facebook; name sets of contacts as a group; lock a group or allow member changes.
I created user flows for first-time and returning users across each profile to make sure features were easy to reach. As the UX Designer, I started with a workflow with stakeholders to explore the process without visual design, optimize it and find gaps, then determine the interface from the final flow.
User Workflows:
User Workflow 1: First-time User (Parent)
The First-time User has a slightly different workflow than the Returning User. Shown below is the final workflow developed for a First-time User.
User Workflow 2: (Parent) Returning User in Crisis Situation
This Returning User has a compressed workflow because they already have a user profile, safety groups, and safe spaces. Below is the workflow developed for a Returning User in a Crisis Situation.
Because the app has several parts, I broke it into sections based on the sitemap, in the order users would be onboarded, so the team could work efficiently as I passed down completed sections.
Mobile App | UX Sketching
Key Findings:
We needed a centralized menu to navigate the app quickly.
We needed accordions on the Safety Groups and Safe Spaces pages to reduce scroll fatigue.
Our AR map could include user input in navigation, similar to Waze.
Mobile App | Wireframes (Low Fidelity)
I created low-fidelity wireframes to collaborate with stakeholders and get alignment and feedback quickly.
Mobile App | Review of Workflows
After building out the low-fidelity wireframes in Adobe Xd, I reviewed the workflow with the key stakeholders. I collaborated with another team member to make the prototype.
Branding:
I worked with stakeholders using a mood board to establish the branding, then built the design system. Ameigo has a clean, calming look with the typeface Montserrat and one high-contrast accent color to help users identify navigation and menu buttons during stressful moments.
The most important outcome of testing was the onboarding redesign: new users didn't know what to do after signing in, so I rebuilt the first-time experience, a location-first home screen, a first-run walkthrough, and in-app tutorials on every screen.
After building a clickable prototype, we validated the design with users and iterated. We tested with nine potential users (teens, parents, and young adults) to gather enough feedback for a second round.
Usability Testing
Key Usability Findings:
Users didn't know where to go after landing on the "profile" page post-sign-in.
Users didn't intuitively know what to do after completing one step.
For parents adding "jr. ameigos," the setup process was too cumbersome.
9 Usability Tests
4 Interviews
3 Major Findings
Updates to the Prototype:
Update 1: Change the Home screen | We changed the home screen from the profile to a location page and added a short app walkthrough for first-time users
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Update 2: Mini Tutorials throughout the app | We added actionable screen titles with prompts to every page and included next and finish buttons.
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Update 3: Adding "jr. ameigos": We created an invite-code link and message so friends could sign up quickly; anyone who entered an age under 18 was automatically labeled a "jr. ameigo."
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Next Steps
Ameigo received positive feedback from users and stakeholders, and the current design has room to grow before implementation.
Further, build the AR Navigation Feature
Continue to test for feedback and iterate on the design
Determine any interest from investors
Immediate Next Steps:
Collaborate with local businesses and organizations to create public "safe spots" and alert codes for use with the app.