Anzena app

End-to-end application

An end-to-end mobile app designed to empower women to feel safe on solo trips.

Overview

Background

Travelling alone as a woman can present unique safety challenges, especially in another country where there might be differences in language and culture. Safety-related concerns surrounding solo travel is a big blocker for many women, with nearly 50% of women citing this as their main reason for deciding against travelling alone (Tourlane).

How can I help women feel empowered and equipped with the safety knowledge they need to go solo travelling?

Solution

Anzena, derived from the Japanese word an-zen [安全] meaning safety or security, is a mobile app which aims to empower women by providing reliable travel safety information and community support, making solo travel a safer and more enjoyable experience.

I set the following goals to guide my research:

Find out what mobile apps currently exist for women’s travel safety
Learn about the factors women consider when planning for solo trips
Uncover the methods of research women take to feel secure ahead of their solo trips
Understand what women’s biggest pain points and blockers are around solo travel
Discern what information would help women feel safer before/while travelling solo

I started my research by looking into existing competitors 👀

Are there any existing travel apps that cater to women with safety as their main value proposition?

My research showed that discussion forums are a common feature in apps like these. What stood out to me, though, was that Travel Ladies and NomadHer—despite positioning themselves as travel safety apps for women—didn’t focus on safety in their forums. Phree was the only app I found that seemed entirely designed with safety as its priority, though it was targeted at a regional audience. I found its Safety Map feature especially interesting and saw potential in the concept, which I wanted to explore further during my interviews.

User interviews

For this project, I was interested in interviewing both experienced and inexperienced solo travellers, as long as they 1. had an active interest in taking a solo trip in the future and 2. considered safety to be a high priority.

Participants: 5 women

Age range: 22-30

Location: Japan, South Korea, Germany, USA

I was surprised to find that the women I spoke with weren’t focused on travel insurance, health clinics, or women drivers. Instead, they prioritized hearing first-hand travel experiences from other women and finding clear, practical information about moving around and navigating during their trips.

full affinity map here

Key insights 💡

2 personas, for 2 types of travellers

After multiple insightful conversations with women ranging from absolute beginners to well-seasoned solo travellers, I decided I would need to create two personas in order faithfully capture the diverse needs and perspectives from my users.

I narrowed down my problem space to two main areas to explore through my designs.

User flows

Based on what I learnt from the competitive research as well as from my conversations with users, I decided that a discussion forum and a safety map would be the best way to address my users' needs.

Low-fidelity prototype

I first wanted to create some basic wireframes—enough to test the concepts of my design with my target users to get feedback early on. I tested four sets of screens, including the home screens, discussion forum, safety map and profile screens.

I was able to observe clear patterns from the testing sessions, highlighting consistent usability issues across users especially in the Safety Map and Profile flows.

Branding

safe-space

comforting

trustworthy

inspiring

To feel inspired to go on a solo trip, users first have to feel safe and equipped with the information they need, which requires trust. This needed to be reflected in the branding.

Due to the potentially heavy subject matter in the app (and the unfortunate reason that necessitates a women’s travel safety app), I decided to keep the colours and typography light and friendly.

Colours

For a fun and inclusive colour palette, I landed on yellow, lime green, orange and brown. Rather symbolically and fitting to the subject of women’s safety, yellow can also be interpreted to represent caution ⚠️

Typography

I opted for Gluten–a confident and approachable typeface. When using Gluten, I imagine an assertive voice that isn’t afraid to be itself, similarly to how I would hope the users coming to Anzena would feel when sharing their experiences and asking questions. I paired this font with Darker Grotesque, a modern and fresh typeface that feels sleek and easy to read.

Imagery

I wanted to evoke a sense of fun through the use of illustrations as well as a feeling of inspiration and awe through the use of vivid and colourful photography to highlight the beauty of each destination.

Moving to a higher fidelity ✨

With my branding all set and feeling confident about the direction to take after an initial round of user testing, it was time to give my designs a little glow-up.

Based on my results, I decided to improve the Discussion flow after noticing lower satisfaction ratings and longer task times compared to other flows. However, fortunately all participants were able to complete the task and the users’ interactions suggested that the problem lay more in the initial finding of the Discussion screens than anything else.

Testing the designs with real users

High-fidelity prototype testing + iterations

Wanting to experiment with an unmoderated testing tool for the first time, I ended up choosing Userbrain due to its easy set-up process and its pool of testers that I could conveniently access. I asked users to complete four task flows–Sign Up, Discussion, Safety Map and Safety Review flows–as well as asking users for their impressions of the Profile screens.

Ok, let’s see this thing in action! 🎬

Sign Up

Home screens

Safety Map

Profile

Discussion forum

Conclusion

Looking back, I feel especially grateful to have spent time exploring this topic and finding solutions to meet users’ needs for a very real problem. As a woman who has always been curious about solo travel–but never had the guts to do it myself–I truly admire the women I spoke with who trusted me with their difficult, and often vulnerable, stories from their solo trips. This project has taught me the value of real-time feedback from users, how to manage (mostly self-imposed) expectations around scope and overcoming the onerous task of prioritisation.

All in all, I was really pleased by the positive reception to the app during the final round of user testing.

Future considerations

1) Add a member-to-member chat functionality to allow users to connect beyond the discussion forum

2) Design additional screens to support user safety through background checks via ID verification

3) Further research on offline mode to learn how other apps have designed this feature