Galaxa
Product, Brand Design and Strategy, UX/UI Research
🏆 Frost* Prize Winner | 🏙️ Urban Planning | 🚺 Women's Safety
6 months | Feb - Aug 2024
The Challenge:
1 in 5 women feel unsafe in public spaces post-pandemic, yet councils lack data on where to invest in improvements. Traditional safety apps create "danger zones" that increase fear rather than confidence.
The Solution:
An astronomy-themed exploration app that reframes safety through environmental transparency, helping women navigate confidently while crowdsourcing actionable council feedback.
This project was awarded the 2024 Frost* Prize “as an excellent solution to the real-world problem of women’s safety resolved in an eloquent way…The project could be rolled out tomorrow with a net benefit to the community”.
Key Features & Highlights
How can we support women’s perception of safety when navigating public spaces, while helping the institutions that own these spaces improve them through well-informed decisions?
The Approach
Following Phase 1 concept development, my interest in astronomy and a precedent of star navigation as a traditional form of wayfinding in earlier cultures, I developed a digital application that playfully explores the narrative of space exploration, but in the context of public and third spaces. Rather than a conventional safety app that gave red danger zones that could harm women’s feeling of safety, I treated the experience as an opportunity to see what’s within the space you’re navigating ahead.
This star navigation metaphor permeates through every design decision made, including:
The use of gestural swipes to mimic movement in space, providing accessibility.
Creating environmental signals in the form of ‘moons’ within a route or place.
Orbiting movements when navigating multiple steps within a route.
The integration of the Northern Star, symbolising navigation and guidance, the defining feature of the logotype.
By creating a system that offers exploration with a confident understanding of the environment through captivating design, this would align with the proposed conceptual framework I developed in Phase 1, aiming to consider how to “focus on creating tranquillity for users and encourage immersion within their community spaces, encouraging increased and prolonged participation” (Cunha, 2024).
Combined with accessible solutions to ‘escape’ or move away from unsafe or uncomfortable public spaces, or explore safe new ones, the integrated ability to review these public spaces could give more opportunity for increased and consistent feedback, which can support council decisions on how to improve them.
The Outcome
The Reflection
Galaxa demonstrated the crucial role that brand storytelling and implementing unique design components play in enhancing the user experience within product design. Here are my key takeaways from the project:
Similar to research, feedback is continuously undertaken. Across the project, I took the initiative to engage with a government lead, receive mentorship from a PhD researcher from XYX Labs in Melbourne, and from a manager from Georges River Council, alongside a survey of 40+ users and 6 prototype testers. With this, I continuously received feedback from various perspectives that kept my project grounded and true to the problem. It helped me to validate my theories and concerns, and set limitations that allowed me to be creative in solving the real user issue, such as providing feedback, and deciding to go to a place.
Accepting that the design thinking stages are completely non-linear and abstract. My initial project plan was conducted assuming the linear structure of the design thinking stages. One day, I felt like I was in the prototyping stage, and the next I was back to empathising and gathering more research. It did not mean I dropped progress, but meant that I challenged my initial knowledge through feedback and iteration, prioritising validation from stakeholders confirm my theories.
Setting realistic scopes for a three-month project. Where I initially planned a full application design for both a user and a council stakeholder, I realised how large and excessive the scope would be, and by stretching too thin, the outcome would not have been as effective.
Thinking long-term in the go-to-market strategy. Having a public relations background, I regularly critiqued the framing of my interactions and their implications. For example, a ‘bad’ perception of safety on a route is highly subjective. Would this fearmonger women rather than support their desire to explore? This is what I’m exploring through continued development into an MVP launch and go-to-market strategy for Phase 3.
