AlertMate: Your smartwatch safety companion, guiding you to act fast, alert loved ones, and stay safe anytime, anywhere.
AlertMate is designed to enhance safety for individuals who feel vulnerable or unsafe. Users can send alerts to a personal contact, offering options like calling the user, sending a taxi, providing directions, or contacting emergency services. The app integrates seamlessly with Apple Watch hand motion features and includes a loud SOS alarm to alert nearby people in emergencies. Its simple, user-friendly design ensures quick access to safety features.
Problem Statement
Many people feel unsafe walking alone, especially at night, and lack quick, wearable safety solutions. Existing apps are often not integrated with smartwatches, limiting their effectiveness in emergencies.
Solution
Inspired by personal experiences, AlertMate helps users feel safer by enabling quick contact with emergency contacts via smartwatch. The app provides clear instructions for assistance and features an SOS alarm to draw attention when needed.
Through user research, I explored smartwatch ideas like safety, health, and travel, analysed apps like Life360 and Safely, studied Apple’s double-tap gesture, and identified key features such as SOS alarms, emergency contacts, navigation, and health check-ins for my app.
Brand Development:
To visualise the UI, I started by sketching app screens to explore different layouts for clear information presentation. I focused on five main screens: the assist user screen (showing how emergency contacts can help), an alert sent screen (indicating help is on the way), an alarm screen (activating an SOS sound), a directions screen (guiding emergency contacts to the user in danger), and an onboarding screen (introducing users to the app and logo). These sketches helped create a simple and intuitive design for an effective user experience.
Digital Development:
In the digital design phase, my idea began to take shape as a viable tool for users. I aimed for a simple and clean UI, using a colour palette of white and black as the base, with green and red as accent colours. I designed a cohesive layout that allowed for easy updates to text and icons. A key challenge was balancing the colour palette for both dark and light modes, which required experimentation to ensure the app looked appealing while maintaining usability.
To enhance the app's usability, I presented my designs in a class critique, which provided valuable feedback for improvement. The response was positive, with the main suggestion being to split the directions page into two screens: one for directions and another for the map showing the route to the user. I found this idea beneficial, as it would simplify the directions page, making it easier to understand, especially in panic situations. Additionally, I wanted to incorporate the SOS alarm feature on all screens used by individuals in danger, ensuring they have a quick way to alert those nearby.
Overall, I enjoyed creating this app because I would use it in real life. Designing for the Apple Watch was both fun and challenging, especially when it came to fitting important information onto the small screen. The most difficult aspect was condensing the information to highlight only what was essential. Once I figured out what to present, it significantly improved the UI, making it cleaner and more streamlined.
