Wander Women
Safer navigation designed for female travelers
Product Design
Mobile App
2023–2024
Timeline
2023–2024
Team
Solo designer
Role
Skills
UX Research, UI/UX Design, Interaction Design, Figma
Problem
It started with my own trips
In six years of solo travel, I faced harassment and moments where I didn’t feel safe. When I talked to other women travelers, I kept hearing the same story: few resources help women feel safe on the road.
64% of women avoid walking back to their accommodation alone at night while traveling.
Nearly half of women who travel solo have skipped entire countries over safety. Yet navigation apps like Google Maps ignore what actually shapes how women move through a city.
Sources: Safer Tourism Foundation and OnePoll, 2025 survey of 2,000 UK travelers. Global Rescue Traveler Safety Survey, 2025.
Opportunity
Safety tools step in too late
Most safety tools step in after something goes wrong. Few help women plan ahead.
How might we help women travel with confidence?
Solution
Helping women plan safer solo trips, before they go.
Women-centered search
Schedule transportation
Safe route & SOS
Traveler feedback
What I did
01
Turned my own solo-travel frustrations into my senior thesis.
02
Showed my first concept at my senior showcase and reframed it from feedback.
03
Set 3 design principles and tested the final concept with 6 women.
Research
I talked to 5 women to see if my experience was the norm
I led interviews with 5 women who travel solo, asking how they plan trips, get around, and handle moments that feel unsafe. I pinned every quote, photo, and note to one research wall, the same board I later showed at my senior showcase.
Across all 5 interviews, the same questions kept coming up.
Worries show up at every stage of a trip
To find where those questions come from, I moved every note from the wall into affinity boards, grouped by trip stage.
Anxiety peaks on the street at night
I turned the patterns into a journey map. It showed anxiety peaks on the trip itself, walking unfamiliar streets at night. But it builds earlier, while women plan where to stay and which way to walk, with little information they trust.
Three frictions drive that anxiety
I traced the anxiety back to three frictions, each tied to a stage of the trip. The numbers match the journey map above.
01 · Before booking
No trusted safety info from other women
Safety tips are scattered and inconsistent, and there’s no easy way to learn from women who’ve been there. Women research it all by hand.
02 · On the trip · peak anxiety
Maps ignore what feels safe
Google Maps doesn’t show lighting, foot traffic, or health access, so women double-check every route on their own.
03 · Responding to issues
Help and health access are hard to find
Pharmacies, women’s clinics, and emergency services aren’t part of trip planning, so finding help in the moment is stressful.
Key insight: the fear women feel on the street starts with what they can’t find before it, safety information they can trust, from other women.
Competitive gap
No tool combined safe routes with women’s knowledge
I reviewed the tools women rely on today. Google Maps has real-time routing but no safety awareness. NomadHer has community but no real-time information. Reddit has honest advice, but it’s scattered and unverified. No tool combined safety-aware routing with trusted knowledge from other women. That was the gap I set out to fill.
First concept
My first concept proved the need, not the solution
I started with what felt obvious: an alert app, similar to Citizen, that showed real-time crime reports so women could avoid dangerous areas.
My logic: if women knew where danger happened, they could avoid it.
I presented it at my senior showcase, and it drew a crowd. Many women told me safety is a real need and said they’d use a tool like this. But they also shared that the real-time alerts made them feel more anxious, not safer:
“Now I am scared to leave my house. Every time I see these alerts, I feel like the whole neighborhood is dangerous.”
“I already worry too much about this stuff. Your app is making me paranoid.”
That mix of excitement and worry pushed me to dig deeper. The need was real. Live alerts weren’t the right answer.
The pivot
So I kept the need and reframed the solution
Instead of warning women about danger, I decided to help them choose safe routes before they go. I set three principles to guide the redesign.
Principle 01
Confidence over fear
From: Every incident
To: What makes a route safe
Principle 02
Plan before, reassure during
From: Warnings mid-walk
To: Safety work before the trip
Principle 03
Trust other women
From: Anonymous crime data
To: Insights from women who’ve been there
Final design
Meet Wander Women
Intelligent Safe Route Navigation
Google Maps optimizes for distance and time. I designed routing that puts safety first, weighing lighting, foot traffic, and health access.
Conversational Map Search
Women told me they ask locals and other women travelers for advice, so I designed search to feel the same: women ask the app the way they’d text a local friend.
What’s next: safer cities for everyone
I also designed for what comes next. When women rate lighting, sidewalks, and transit, the map shows where public space needs work. Over time, this data could help city planners make streets safer for women, children, and everyone.
Outcome
Tested with women, recognized worldwide
I shared the new direction at my senior showcase and tested the final concept with 6 women. Wander Women went on to win four international design awards.
Silver · 2024
MUSE Creative Awards
Silver · 2024
London Design Awards
Gold · 2024
French Design Award
Platinum · 2024
American Good Design Award
Learnings
Test before you fall for a solution
I was sure the alert concept was right, and feedback proved me wrong. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
Next time, I’ll test even earlier, before building. Being wrong early is much cheaper than shipping the wrong direction.
Thanks for reading.
