Solo Commuting After Dark
User Experience Research - CMU MIIPS, 2024
Collaboration with Poorva Wange
Topic: After Dark Commuting in Pittsburgh – Understanding How Residents Navigate the City After Dark.
Focus Area: The influence of familiarity and technology when commuting solo at night in Pittsburgh, PA
Research Methods: Literature Review, Domain Survey, Role Play, Observation, Online Survey, Interview, Co Design.
Overview
Duration
8 Weeks
Role
UX Research
Software Used
Figma, Miro, Adobe Suite
Insights from the research highlight the vital role technology plays, not only in physical safety but in shaping mental perceptions of security. Participants reported using tools like music, podcasts, and video calls to mentally reframe their commute, feeling safer by diverting their focus from potentially threatening surroundings.
Many participants equated safety with predictability, choosing familiar routes even when unaware of their actual safety, suggesting that emotional comfort often outweighs rational risk assessments in solo commuting decisions.
We hypothesize that this reliance on familiar routes is driven by cognitive biases, such as the familiarity heuristic, which equates predictability with safety. Emotional comfort often outweighs logical decision-making, especially in high-stress situations like night commuting. Our research identifies a gender gap in how safety is perceived and managed, with women taking more proactive measures and men exhibiting greater confidence, often viewing walking as leisure. These insights underscore the need for gender-specific safety innovations, improved public transportation systems, and orientation programs to help students feel safer during night commutes.
I used our core goals to ideate Userflows, outlining the ideal interactions to form the basis of Pranaam. This process revealed key features for the application and highlighted problems we could address through our design.
Initial Research & Findings
Our literature review highlighted that a higher percentage of women use public transport and travel to work compared to men. However, the structure, ambiance, and overall experience of public transport are often not designed with women in mind, leading to feelings of uncertainty and chaos. Despite the existence of various safety applications, many women continue to face travel burdens, including cost, stress, and safety risks. Women also tend to make more trips per day than men, increasing their exposure to these risks. Additionally, our domain surveys uncovered a gap in awareness about gender-neutral travel considerations and specialized safety technologies aimed at enhancing personal safety.
Research findings revealed that women often experience heightened anxiety during solo night commutes, relying on a “sixth sense” to stay vigilant. This manifests in behaviors such as carefully selecting seats on public transport and frequently using mapping apps. Despite their heavy reliance on smartphones for navigation and safety, awareness of apps specifically designed for women’s safety remains limited. Gender differences were clear, with women taking more safety precautions and relying on safety in numbers, while men generally expressed more confidence and viewed night walking as less risky. Familiarity with the environment increased perceived safety for both genders, with public transportation, especially buses, being favored due to the presence of others, highlighting the need to improve transit options for safer commutes.
Embodying the User
Public Bus: Many students prefer public buses due to convenience, affordability, and the comfort of having strangers around, which provides a sense of safety.
Walking: While some students choose walking to unwind or refresh after a long day.
Heightened Awareness: Almost all respondents noted a heightened sense of awareness when commuting at night, especially in unfamiliar or deserted areas. Many feel more confident as they become accustomed to Pittsburgh's public transport system, but anxiety lingers when alone at night.
Comfort with Tech: There is significant reliance on smartphones for navigation, communication, and general security, with several participants mentioning they would feel "terrified" or "helpless" without their phones. Smartphones provide a critical layer of emotional and practical security, especially for emergency contacts or for making quick payments during commutes.
Gender: Female respondents emphasized the importance of safety in numbers, preferring to commute with others, while being alone at night caused more anxiety for women than men, who generally showed greater confidence. Women reported using specific safety measures such as sharing locations, safety apps, pepper spray, and video calls, whereas men relied more on general awareness. Although some men noted discomfort in unfamiliar areas, they were less precautionary, with one admitting to taking safety for granted. When asked about commuting without a smartphone, men mentioned inconveniences like missing music, while women focused on the loss of essential safety tools, highlighting a gender imbalance where men approach walking as leisure, while women remain vigilant about potential risks.
Interview & Survey Findings
CoDesign Activity
This research method aimed to explore how familiarity with a route home shapes the perception of safety for university students, even if these routes aren’t objectively safer. We hypothesized that the emotional comfort derived from familiarity outweighs safety metrics, and wanted to understand how participants designed or modified their ideal commute route based on this idea.
We delved into participants' mindsets of how they consciously or subconsciously make decisions before and along their journey. We uncovered factors that influence their journey - some are momentary decisions while are based on a lifetime of experiencing the world - but none called out prior research or any other objective factors that assured them of their route's safety.
We had participants map out their preferred route home, pointing out landmarks they look out for, along with their use of technology through their journey. We then had them map out an unfamiliar route - something many struggled with recollecting due to its infrequent use. We had them map their use of technology here too, and then reflect on how these routes made them feel in isolation and in comparison to one another.
Participants reported feeling safer on their preferred route, often looking for alternate modes of transport on the other route. They wanted to get home sooner in unfamiliar territory, and recalled instances of misfortune when on this route - bad weather, loud noises, etc.
The research resulted in identifying the cognitive biases, such as the familiarity heuristic, that drove participants to choose familiar routes over unfamiliar ones.
Product Opportunity Gaps
MUST
The solution must provide real-time safety information about routes to the user while including gender specific safety recommendations. Moreover, it must consider integrating existing technology (like music) so that the users can find comfort through their current products.
SHOULD
The solution should have a feature where the users can save "safe" routes helping them get familiar with their commute journey. Additionally, it should have a feature for to share location with family and friends.
COULD
The solution could integrate artificial intelligence by providing a "virtual companion" to the user while commuting solo at night. Secondly, a virtual space to share experiences could be incorporated, enabling users to build a community. In order to scale the solution, partnership with local transportation services and police could be established, to ensure safe commuting experiences for the user.
Key Questions
How might we enhance the predictability and familiarity of commuting options to facilitate safe commute experiences?
How might we design solutions that leverage reliance and dependency on technology achieve a sense of security and confidence during solo commutes?