Good Bystander is a project that showcases mobile application prototype development on a socially significant issue of sexual violence aiming to educate users on their abilities and strengths in cases of domestic violence, online sexual harassment and drug and alcohol-facilitated abuse. The prototype attempts to become an extension to the Bystander Intervention Programme that educates people on how to be active bystanders and thus encourages them to take the most appropriate and safe actions in cases of sexual violence. The idea is influenced by the Bystander Intervention Programmes taught at DCU, UCC and some other universities worldwide. 

I reached out to a couple of people within the target audience within the age of 18 - 25. The interview is needed to uncover what the users really want in an educational app on fighting sexual harrassment. They responded to questions about how their social category affects their responsiveness to risky situations, their desire to help in risky situations and how active learning can help them learn better.

It's important to know the gaps other competitors are not taking care of. This is why we did a competitive analysis to check what other apps in the market are doing good and where the gaps are coming from. After our competitive analysis, we were able to realize the gaps and how we stack against competitors. Here are four competitors we have outlined. 

We decided to go ahead and delve deep into the supposed life of our users. We did user personas on the end-users to build empathy when developing the products. With these personas, we were able to gain similar perspective into the thought process of who needs to intervene in situations like this. 

Empathy maps was extremely valuable to us as we could establish a common ground immediately and prioritize the user's needs based on what they think, say, feel and do. 

Our focus is to create an app with good experience that is why we intended to go through the process of having a user flow where we outline the key steps our users will be taking and how to optimize the experience for them by so doing. 

The next stage was to quickly prototype with a build, measure, and learn strategy in mind.

The goal is to build as fast as possible, measure that progress against user data, and have users test it to provide more guidance. Although not perfect, sketching helped me run through so many good (and bad) ideas to get to the best ones.

I understand that designs should go through user testings before it is finalized. Because this UX project is user-centric, I used a combination of informal testing and  low-fidelity prototyping to get closer to the final product that will meet the user's needs.I found that my lo-fi version needed a few iterations which I was able to do through user testing.

Noticing the amount of gender-based stereotypes around the topic of sexual violence, my colleague and I came to the conclusion to produce unbiased illustrations in terms of gender, race or sexual orientation.  Hence, the reason behind the inanimate (yet animate) illustrations of ordinary objects that are often tools in situations of sexual harrassments 

The watch symbolises the necessity to act. Also, an ever-present tool in the situations of domestic violence. Moreover, it denotes that no matter how long the violence has been lasting, it should not be normalised; The smartphone is closely associated with the topic of online sexual harassment, as well as with the possibility of using technologies both for unethical purposes ( like spreading rumors about a person's sexual life) and for socially beneficial things, (documenting the fact of violence in order to enable the victim enough self-confidence to contact the authorities); The cocktail glass shows that often delicious drinks can be used against a person and the fun scenarios can end with sad consequences, if bystanders do not start taking actions against people with bad intentions.

Interactive Quizzes

We decided to do some usability testing and as a result we found some problems and fixed some user-unfriendly experiences.

We decided to find a sample of our target audience and select them based on different demographics. We sent them the link of the prototype and tested them through an semi-moderated usability testing using Zoom. 

Our users went through some tasks while we watched and we asked them some SUS questions and interviewed them thereafter to clarify and get their insights.