Bibti is a mobile application that will enable women to coordinate and connect with other women in their vicinity as travel buddies.
The proposed app will increase the safety of women using public transport, or walking, by enlarging their networks beyond their immediate family or friends. The app will also provide a feedback mechanism to systematically report incidents of harassment, molestation, and violence.
PROJECT MISSION
By using bibti, young working women who rely on public transit can coordinate relatively short trips around their work, home, and school.
Generally for feelings of insecurity or just to not be alone. Some coordinate a trip because they think it is fun to meet someone new. The trip requests are generally for very pedantic trips such as grocery stores, daily errands, and getting home from late classes.
Commuters desire to plan their buddy and trip logistics in advance. Trip logistics are deciding factors for many of our user's plans.
Client
bibti
Timeline
4-week Sprint
December 2022 - January 2023
Medium & Tools
iOS Prototypes Created in Figma
Presentation in Canva
Planning in Notion
Role
Lead UX Researcher & UI Designer
Group of a 4-Person Team
Bibti is derived from the Arabic term of endearment for women: Habibti. It means “My love” or “My darling” and is commonly used between friends and family members alike. We want all women to feel valued and believe that this term of endearment embodies the feeling that all women should have while traveling.
- Bibti's founder -
RESEARCH STRATEGY
Based on the testing result on the web app, bibti's target market is young professional women, who are minorities, far from home, have stable jobs, and rely on public transit in Washington DC. We conducted 9 user interviews, and only 42.9% of whom were in the target market.
57.1% of the users, who were college students, we interviewed were outside the target market. At first, we intended to interview an equal amount of young professionals and college students - but pivoted to only interviewing the latter group realizing they're more receptive to the idea.
From that point, we discussed with our client and changed the target market from young professional women to college students because they have more disadvantages with limited income to use taxi services. Eventually, Bibti may want to expand its target market, so we also wanted to provide our client with some initial research outside of that target market.
RESEARCH FINDING
User Interviews
Our user research provided us with 12 main takeaways which we wrote out on virtual sticky notes and mapped to discover common user pain points, behaviors, and needs.
However, after discussing and grouping those takeaways, our group came up with 4 key findings
Whenever users thought that they might be in a dangerous situation while walking alone, their first action was to call a friend or someone they trusted because they wanted somebody to know that they were unsafe. Users also felt uncomfortable if they need to ask a stranger for help because they did not want to bother anyone and did not trust people whom they haven't met before.
If something bad happened, all of the users agreed that they will run or walk faster, and some would come up with an escape plan like where they would run to.
Neither the pepper spray nor the blue button on college campuses made them feel safe.
If users felt unsafe when walking at night, they preferred booking an Uber or Lyft even though it may cost more than usual.
Users tended to plan their trips ahead if they knew the exact date and time they needed to get out. However, for pedantic trips such as to the grocery stores, daily errands, and getting home from late classes, they would ask someone they knew to walk with them or book an Uber if necessary.
In order to trust someone users haven't met, gender and appearance are the 2 main keys that can enhance trust. 9/9 users preferred to walk with a woman than another gender. 6/9 felt a clean and fine-looking appearance would be more trustable.
Market Research
There were many apps that created a safe community for users in the same area. Clients gave us 8 apps that they considered their competitors. However, only 2 apps had the same purpose as bibti: Safe Up and App-Elles. Safe Up was only for women, and App-Elles was for women and LGBTQ+. Although those apps had some features that shown help whenever users need it, they did not provide a companion for users walking alone. Therefore, bibti was an innovative product, which not only created a safe community but also created a safe trip for women so they could move fearlessly and freely in public spaces.
The other apps had many useful features that bibti may consider. Therefore, by showing them the competitive and comparative analysis table, we suggested to our clients some features which could be developed in the future.
Persona
We created Jessica, a college student in Washington DC, who was far from her family in California and single. She did not have a car, so walking and public transport were her main transportation. Jessica had limited income because she was a full-time student, so she could not afford Uber or Lyft anytime. She loved parties and usually got home late, so she really wanted to have someone to walk with her at night.
PROBLEM STATEMENTS
Women and nonbinary genders feel unsafe walking at night on college campuses. They often have a hard time finding someone to walk home with, leaving them to either risk their safety or pay for an uber/lyft they can't afford.
SOLUTION STATEMENTS
Bibti is a mobile application that allows non binary and female college students to request someone to walk with them while ensuring that users feel safe and have a trusting community
IDEATION
MoSCoW
Thanks to our client for giving us a file with all of the features that they considered for the app. However, in this project, we just created only one user flow due to the time restriction, so we had to choose which features must be used.
We also considered what features should and could have in this app in case we need to expand the app for later purposes.
There were some features that the app won't have, such as
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The choice between providers because the early launching stage of this app was a free version for students with limited income.
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The ability for users to filter by gender was totally unnecessary because this app was only for women.
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Last one was the Bibti token. We really loved the idea of this feature because the co-founder was in Turkey. She explained that some women in Turkey didn't have money because they were financially dependent on their husbands. Token was a way for them to trade for what they needed. Nevertheless, the market of this project was the U.S. so the token was not a good idea at this time.
User Flow
Our group decided that all users must be verified before using the app in order to make sure that they did not use a fake account for a bad purpose. The background check was a third party that collaborated with bibti. By scheduling a commute, a user could send an invitation to a safepal, who would be the user's companion for this trip. After the safepal accepted the invitation, they could start the commute. When the trip finished, the user could write a review about the safepal.
Alright, it was time to make our ideas happen!
From......
Sketches
To......
Lo-Fi Prototype
There were 5 main tasks that we wanted users to do for the usability testing with the Lo-Fi Prototype:
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Create Account
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Verify Account
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Schedule Commute
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Look for SafePal
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Finish Commute
User Journey
We conducted usability tests with 5 people then came up with the user journey above. The creating account and verifying account steps were exciting to all users. However, they got frustrated when they started scheduling a commute.
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The scheduling screen was not intuitive, so we needed to design a streamlined flow to get to the scheduling screen. Rewording or redesigning the buttons to enhance efficiency.
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Most users missed the message screen. The solution was adding the message to the main flow so users must send a message for safepal to let them know the request.
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One user questioned us how did they know that the safepal would accept to commute with them? We admitted that we had not thought about it, so we totally needed to add an invitation screen and a response screen.
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Another user asked us where would they meet each other. And yup! Again, the flow did not complete yet! Another screen for the meeting location.
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Last step, some users said that they might accidentally hit the SOS button because it was in the easy-to-reach areas (rule of thumb). Therefore, the SOS button needed to be relocated.
Iteration
Some examples of how we redesigned the screen based on users' insights.
Lo-Fi Prototype
Before:
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Small photos
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No circle around avatar
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Text heavy
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Everything above fold
After:
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Larger photos
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Avatar takes full upper part of the screen
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Icons use for text
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Scroll to see more
Before:
Teal Gradient Background: hard to read content
After:
Dirty Red Gradient Background: easier to read content
Lo-Fi Prototype
Before:
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Simple text
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Small font size
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Difficult to scan and read
After:
Create visual modal with clear steps + note
PROTOTYPE
Component Library
Hi-Fi Prototype
NEXT STEPS
Next 2 weeks:
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SafePal's Page, Process of how they will become a SafePal
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How they will accept invitation
Within the next month:
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LiveMap to allow for location of nearby crimes
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Event page
Until March Launch Date!
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Expand the SOS button & incorporate emergency contact button
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Alert feature if their walk has not been finished