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Kanwara Kawnern

User Experience and Service Design MA

I am a student integrating my marketing background with user experience and service design to enhance my research skills and empathy for all users. This approach leads to practical analysis, systematic thinking, and effective solutions that improve user experience.

Helpy, a mobile application showcasing features for safe and enhanced female solo travel experiences.

Travel freely and safely with HELPY

Helpy is an application that integrates the use of smart devices with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist female solo travellers who value their freedom and independence, while also prioritising personal safety. Helpy enables users to access local help, including other nearby travellers, local people, businesses, or emergency services.

Project Background

The pie chart illustrates that 84% of females participate in solo travel, and 55% of females show interest in solo travel.
The pie charts illustrate that more than 88% have an uncomfortable solo travel experience, and 12% of female solo travellers have experienced a dangerous situation.
The picture shows that for female solo travellers, safety issues limit freedom during solo travel, safety negatively affects women’s travel experiences, and women still need support from others for help.

Based on the secondary research, it indicates that solo travel is becoming increasingly popular across various travel styles. By taking a look at demographic statistics, women show a significant interest in solo travel, with over 80% of solo travellers being female. However, personal safety remains a major concern for these travellers. Many female solo travellers report feeling threatened, and some have even experienced attacks during their journeys.

User Research and Problem Area Exploration

To address the right pain point, indicate the value of solo travel, and reassure the secondary data assumption that personal safety is the main concern for female solo travellers, primary data were collected throughout the research process to identify the opportunity to improve the experience for female solo travellers.

Research Process

The picture shows the three primary research processes, including semi-structured, card sorting, and diary study, with the experienced female solo traveller and a female who is interested in solo travel.
The primary data was collected by semi-structured interviews with experienced female solo travellers and non-experienced females who have an interest in solo travelling, with card sorting to indicate the main concern, and a diary study to record real-time data of females who travel alone at that time to discover hidden insights and findings.

Primary Data Analysis Process

The picture shows the summary of the data analysis process.
The data gathered from primary research was reviewed and analysed to uncover findings, insights, and opportunities using various techniques such as affinity mapping, the laddering technique, and the 2X2 matrix.

Key Finding

The picture shows the key finding that female solo travellers and females who are interested in solo travel prioritise availability and accessibility of support, safety, ability to be flexible in exploring, and loneliness challenge.
It could be seen that female solo travellers value the ability to explore the world freely and flexibly along the journey. However, the lack of support and safety concerns often disrupt the journey.

Key Insight

The picture shows the evidence from participants' quotes supports the insight that for solo travellers, a sense of safety is closely tied to knowing they have a reliable network of trusted and supportive people nearby, and the anxiety surrounding safety and the ability to handle dangerous situations independently can prevent travellers from fully enjoying their trip.
Anxiety about personal safety can prevent a female solo traveller’s enjoyment of her trip, particularly when it comes to handling potentially dangerous situations independently. A sense of safety largely depends on how well the traveller is informed about reliable support options available nearby.

Opportunity

With all of the data, it leads to this UX vision statement.

“There is an opportunity for a product or service for female solo travellers who desire the freedom to explore and flexibility while having access to trustworthy local support for assistance but hesitate to do so due to trust issues and personal safety concerns. By addressing this, it would reduce their vulnerability and challenge the norm that defines women as victims, promoting gender equity as women can travel as freely and securely as men.”

Final Outcome

HELPY is a platform that integrates AI technology and Smart devices to assist female solo travellers in preventing, protecting, and escaping from dangerous situations. It enables users to receive assistance from nearby helpers, local businesses, and services. Furthermore, the system would recommend the safest route and provide suggestions based on real-time data and the user’s condition, as detected by the smart device and phone data.

How HELPY works

Helpy provide the ability to get trustworthy help in local area (e.g. safe area, helpers, emergency service) and make suggestion based on real-time data to reassure user in safe state during jourey. While offer ability for user to helps other travellers at the same time, By helping other travellers, the user would earn some special benefits from our partner such as special accommodation discount, prize which offer by partner hotel and business.

Key Features

The Home page comprises the key main features, such as Get Helper to ask for general help, or a kind of favour, while Emergency help is for getting assistance when encountering a dangerous situation. Other sub-features include Call Home, Auto-Translation, AI call, and live recording to provide needed assistance during the journey.

Safe Routes Navigation

The system would analyse the saved destination, then provide a suggestion with tips to travel safely in that destination before travel. During navigation, the system would suggest a safe route, alert about danger and safe areas along the journey.

Turst Building

Helpy fill in the concern about trustworthiness to ask for help from others by providing ratings and reviews, a Verification badge, and a Contribution badge for the helper and a safe area.

Helper Mode

To enhance the travel experience, users can switch helper mode on and off at any time.

AI Integration

The AI role is to analyse data provided from various sources (e.g., the government’s travel agency, users’ reports, smart devices), then make suggestions based on its prediction to keep users in a safe state.

Helpy’s Ecosystem

Helpy collaborates with various ecosystems to efficiently assist travelers, including government travel agencies, local businesses, emergency services, and hotels.

Development Process

To ensure the outcome could fill in the pain point of the female solo traveller, the development process of Helpy includes the adaptation based on the results from the design workshop and prototype session that works with the real target user.

Process Summary

The picture illustrated the summary of the project's contribution from week 1 to 7 in the development phase.
The process summary shows the contributions and workflow throughout the development phase. During weeks 1 to 3, there was a review of insights and the developing concepts for ideas. Weeks 4 to 6 were dedicated to iterating on features to meet user needs. In the final week, it is the week for finalising the outcomes and creating deliverables, including a video and a prototype.

User Interaction

The picture illustrated the details of 4 workshops with the user to develop the outcome, including a co-design workshop, prototype concept testing, low-fidelity testing, and high-fidelity testing.
To develop this outcome, four types of testing were conducted. The co-design workshop, which utilises the Frantic Five method and follows up questions from both the helper and traveller perspectives. This step aims to generate and reconfirm potential ideas in the initial stages. The prototype testing will be used to validate and further develop these initial ideas. This involves context scenario testing and a think-aloud process to gather participants’ perceptions of the concept. Low-fidelity testing, where participants are given a scenario to explore to gather their thoughts on features and the overall flow of the service. Lastly, high-fidelity testing was conducted to recheck the user interface (UI) and the flow, ensuring everything functions as intended.

How HELPY bring Value

Helpy create a safe ecosystem for female travellers and change the norm of female travel alone from high risk to empowering and enhancing female solo travellers to be confident enough to go on a solo journey.

On the other hand, Helpy help change the perception of a place perceived as high risk to a safe area and boosts the revenue growth with the increase in the travel industry.

My Journey as a Student of MA User Experience and Service Design

Based on my experience as a marketing student, I don’t have a clear path for which career path as a specialist I would like to pursue. However, with this course, I start to uncover more about myself, including my skills and even my hidden abilities. Before, I was an introverted person and afraid to talk to others. After completing the course, I enjoy the time I spend doing the interview and working with various participants for various courses, including this project. With that experience, it made me discover my passion for exploring various kinds of perspectives and going deeper to gain valuable insights to analyse for further development to improve user experience.

With all of this, reflecting on my contribution to this project, it shows my passion to pursue the career path as a UX researcher. Although there are some weaknesses in design I need to improve, I will not give up and keep improving myself to be the best version of me in this career path.

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