Copwatch
Revamping the mobile experience to ensure the ongoing safety of vulnerable Australians in the face of law enforcement
Duration
September 2022 – October 2022
Project
An Australian social enterprise mobile application design and development project
Focus
Product design, lean research, accessibility and user testing
Copwatch is an Australian social enterprise mobile application designed to help vulnerable Australians to keep safe and ensure police are accountable for their actions.
MY ROLE
Lead Product Designer
TEAM
Thoughtworks team of 6
- 1x Lead Business Analyst
- 1x Tech Lead
- 3x Developers
- 1x QA
Problem
How might the Thoughtworks’ team redesign and develop Copwatch’s mobile application within 6 weeks that can be utilised at is best and have the appropriate user experience for First Nations Communities, especially for the youths, when interacting with police, recording interactions with police and receiving assistance when subjected to police discrimination and harassment?
The ask…
- Improve their onboarding process by incorporating the right balance of educational text and setting up emergency contacts to allow users to understand their rights when interacting with police and the purpose
of Copwatch
- Incorporate an in-app camera recording feature to allow users to safely record videos and can be stored in app file in case of the scenario of police deleting videos from native’s photo function
- Create a more seamless communication channel for both users and emergency contacts during the set up emergency contacts process
- Incorporate live location in the automatic messaging when users are alerting their emergencyduring high risk situations
Understanding the product & target users
Using the Desirability, Viability and Feasibility framework, I designed and co-facilitated a collaborative and lean inception workshop with key stakeholders to determine the product direction and key target users. Ultimately ensuring all stakeholders were aligned with building the right product and emphasising the right target users.
Visibility: What is the product and how does it relate back to the business?
- Defined the product vision by combining Copwatch’s business and customer values to form a compelling message to their customers
- Identified what the product IS/IS NOT/DOES/DOES NOT to determine the guardrails for what the product is and does for the users
- Established product goals to raise and clarify the main objectives of this product renewal
Desirability: Who are our Target users?
- Identified target users to ensure stakeholders and team were aware of who the personas of the key target users is
- Outlined user journey to describe step by step on how the users were going to achieve the goals we have set
Feasibility: What did we discover from a technical delivery?
- Brainstormed key features to allow users to be able do something on the app to achieve the product goals
- Determined the feasibility (Effort vs value) about the key features
- Determined sequence of the feature to ensure incremental validation of the product
Iteratively designing the mobile app
During this phase, it was important for myself to establish alignment with my team and the client on design direction for each features and enhancements. As this was an Agile delivery project, I was able to come up with design concepts
in iterations based on the priority sequence.
As a lead product designer, my primary responsibilities were:
- Facilitating product design workshops to guide the team’s direction towards choosing the most effective and efficient design approach and concepts that meets agreed customer, business and technical outcomes when solving the different customer problems.
- Establishing the design systems of the application where I heavily focussed on accessibility and iOS & Android platform requirements
- Defining the key feature design concepts that allowed the junior product designer and I to iteratively design
*Note – The client had limited budget to receive feedback on the design approach
Some examples of UI components in the design system
Accessibility UI consideration
Key feature flow
Supporting app development
In parallel to designing, I was collaborating with developers, business analyst and quality assurance analyst on development and desk checks
- Provided design requirements when the BA and QA were setting up the story card
- Facilitated the design walkthrough for the developers and QA when kicking off an iteration
- Assisted my junior designer when designs were required
- Participated in desk checks with developers, BA and QA when the story was ready to be reviewed
Conducting User test
With the quick turnaround and budget constraint, we efficiently planned an usability test and recruited 3 participants to complete 4 tasks to ensure that the app met these success criteria:
- The users being able to complete the tasks in a timely manner
- The users are satisfied with core features of the app
- The users demonstrated feedback that they will use the app when released
