MeetDub: The Endgame to the Ave-ngers
By Kevin Choi, Elizabeth Castillo, Navkiran Nijjar, Allan Tran
Problem and Solution Overview
For more than several years, there has been an issue around UW Seattle’s campus regarding public safety. Students have stated their worries about traveling, especially on foot, around the U-District neighborhood adjacent to the university. Much of this anxiety originates from the perceptible increase in criminal activity around and on the Ave after dark, and suspicious persons can be seen there even during daytime. Impressions of public safety are further exaggerated by UW Alert emails sent out to every student, especially in light of the recent events occurring on the first week of this fall quarter. The importance of safety and wellbeing, both at an individual level and students as a collective, cannot be understated. Despite only taking on a couple aspects of social sustainability, both safety and well-being have far-reaching implications on the UW student life and experience for current and potential students.
We then present MeetDub, an application that provides a platform made exclusively for those who attend UW to connect and have a walking partner. Students can tailor their app usage to have a more individualized experience by using the option of preferences before searching for a partner. Given the app is being designed with safety in mind from the ground up, some features would include accounts being bound to UW NetIDs; a public safety rating system; and a navigation algorithm that displays safer routes. Overall, the idea of MeetDub was created to allow and provide more agency to students for their college experience, where it attempts to mitigate the fear and worries about traveling around the surrounding areas of UW campus.
Paper Prototype, Usability Testing & Results
The paper prototype we developed for usability testing was relatively simple and straightforward given our two main tasks. Overall testing went smoothly, but some of the problems users encountered was confusion around labeling and the need to better clarify some buttons. Users also suggested areas of improvement such as including reorganization or certain features, of some that were eventually included in our digital design mockup. Though the main purpose of the application was understandable and the participants were able to properly navigate given high-level tasks such as asking them to simply find a walking partner.
Task 1: Finding someone to travel with
Task 2: Making new friends while traveling
Digital Mockup
The transition from paper prototype to digital mockup is significant, and more time was spent given that we were more meticulous when digitally designing but the fidelity of our paper prototype design was quite low and elementary. We incorporated some features that users expressed would help with the usability or experience of the app such as separating screens or adding more elements to support safety.
The flow of screens are displayed in sequential order from left to right.
Task 1: Finding someone to travel with
The app only supports university credentials, specifically UW NetID credentials via SSO authentication. The user will be told that the app is made only for those with such credentials. This feature allows for a mutual trust system backed by real people that are from the university. Names and photos are grabbed directly from a user’s university account; users will not be able to change their name or display photo without requesting approval. This system is also better reinforced with UW’s transition to mandatory 2FA logins.
Once users are logged in, they can input their origin and destination points. After doing so, the distance and current ETA will show while displaying their active route. Routes may be displayed using an algorithm such that they users would be traveling through areas considered to relatively improve personal safety (e.g. bright lights, more traffic).
Before searching for a buddy, users can navigate to preferences. After receiving potential partners, the bio of each user is displayed if others would like to optionally share information about themselves. The app will try to best match with candidates matching user preferences in addition to showing the cardinal direction of the other person’s destination, but at the same time will display other users seeking partners. Each user also has a rating that will be displayed as later mentioned below. Messaging is enabled before sending a request to walk with other users also seeking a walking partner. Users can toggle whether they are actively looking for partners, and will show up in potential partners.
In the example, Jessica will receive a notification that the user wants to walk with her. She confirms, and both the user and Jessica will be able to see each other’s precise location. The destination will temporarily route to the user’s partner, and they will both need to swipe to confirm that they have met up. It is suggested that a user use a destination or stop where both parties can split up if they are not comfortable with traveling together to their actual destination, such as their residence.
Once they meet up, they swipe to confirm before it changes to another swipe that ends the trip. The cancel and message feature is left enabled. Having the cancel feature still on is for continuity purposes used to signify for future reference that the trip was canceled. When a trip is completed, users can rate their experience with their partner and use corresponding tags. If something really went wrong, then they can report a problem.
Task 2: Making new friends while traveling
Past travels are recorded with information on the date, time elapsed, distance covered, map with route traveled, and the rating given to their partner. Users can view the person’s bio, add them as a friend, or block them. The user sends a request to Jessica that she needs to confirm that she wants to be friends with the user. Blocking someone will no longer display each other as a candidate for both users, and remove each other as friends if applicable.
Once Jessica accepts the user’s friend request, they both can now message each other. Messaging is only enabled with others if they both choose to be friends on the app. The only other times direct messaging is enabled is when searching for a candidate or during a trip. Group chats can also be created from the friends list of one user. From introducing friends and messaging, we hope that between users and past partners, they can take their interactions more offline or away from the app such that they can perhaps become friends in real life as well.
Summary
We do not think it is socially sustainable for students to repeatedly fear for their own safety such that it hinders them from enjoying things that the surrounding areas of the UW campus has to offer. Not being able to do something in a location because of the crime rate or hour of the day is quite disheartening for the college experience. However, the general consensus among students from our surveying is that there is safety in numbers. MeetDub aims to take that idea and expand on it in practical ways, so much so it may as well be our motto.
Our solution of an app provides an easy entry into meeting with other students while establishing clear common ground that some of us just want to get from place to place. Having an app focused on walking with other students isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it can bring back a substantial amount of student agency over their extracurriculars or social lives if realized. MeetDub can even be upscaled to support not just individual partners, but can have its full potential better realized with group partners. The Ave-ngers are still at large after all.
