A women's personal safety application that puts emergency response and safe navigation at the tip of your fingers.
Frabe is a personal safety mobile application designed to empower women with fast, reliable access to emergency services, helplines, and safe areas all in a single tap.
The app bridges the gap between feeling unsafe and getting real help, offering features like a one touch SOS button, horizontally scrolling emergency helplines (Police 100, Women Helpline 1091, Railway Help 182), safe area maps with nearby hospitals, police stations, pharmacies and more, CCTV activity logs, and real-time crowd density monitoring.
I led the end-to-end UX and UI design process from initial user interviews and competitive analysis through wireframing, prototyping, and delivering the final high-fidelity screens. I also worked alongside the development team to ensure pixel-perfect implementation.
Women in India face real safety threats daily on public transport, in crowded spaces, and late at night. Existing solutions were fragmented: calling the police required finding the number, safe area maps were separate apps, and there was no unified record of incidents.
The challenge was to design a single application that feels instantly usable under stress because in an emergency, seconds matter. Every tap, every screen, every color choice had to serve that core principle.
Figma · FigJam · Google Forms · Adobe Illustrator
India reports millions of crimes against women annually. Emergency response times suffer because people can't quickly reach the right number, locate the nearest safe place, or alert contacts all at once, all instantly.
I conducted mixed-methods research: 12 in-depth interviews with women aged 18–45, a survey of 80 respondents, and competitive analysis of 6 existing safety applications to identify gaps.
12 semi-structured interviews with women aged 18–45 across urban and semi-urban areas. Key themes: fear of public transport, difficulty reaching helplines quickly, unfamiliarity with nearby safe locations.
Gap: No app combined one-tap SOS + helplines + safe area map in a single, beautiful, stress-tested UI.
Two primary personas emerged from the research, representing the spectrum of Frabe users.
Priya takes the bus and local train every day between Puducherry and her college campus. She often returns home after 9 PM from library sessions and feels anxious on poorly lit stretches. She's tech-savvy and already uses Google Maps but wishes it had a safety layer.
Meena manages a small team at a government office. She frequently travels to field sites and handles incident reports. She wants a tool her team can use to file and view SOS alerts and CCTV logs from a single dashboard and wants it simple enough for non-technical colleagues.
Mapping Priya's emotional and cognitive journey from sensing danger to receiving help revealing the exact moments where the design must be frictionless.
| Stage | Action | Thoughts | Emotion | Opportunity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Sense danger | Notices she's being followed on an empty street | "Something feels wrong. I need help now." | Panicked |
App must be accessible from lock screen |
| 2. Open app | Unlocks phone and taps Frabe icon | "I hope this loads fast. My hands are shaking." | Anxious |
Instant load, no splash screen delays |
| 3. Trigger SOS | Taps the large red SOS button | "Did it go? Is someone coming?" | Tense |
Clear confirmation animation + haptic feedback |
| 4. Call helpline | Swipes to Women Helpline card (1091) and taps | "I need to speak to someone right now." | Cautious |
Cards must be large, one-tap dialable |
| 5. Find safe place | Taps "View Safe Areas" to see nearest police station | "Where can I go right now?" | Searching |
Bottom sheet opens fast, shows 9 categories clearly |
| 6. Reach safety | Navigates to pharmacy 200m away, stays inside | "I'm safe. The alert was sent." | Relieved |
Post-SOS reassurance UI, cancel option |
Synthesising research into the four critical failure points in existing safety solutions that Frabe directly addresses.
Translating pain points into design opportunities using the "How Might We" framework.
Every screen was designed around a single principle: usable under stress. Large tap targets, high-contrast colors, and minimal cognitive load at every step.
The login and signup screens feature custom SVG illustrations a woman with a safety shield for login, and two figures connected by a heart for signup reinforcing the app's mission visually before a single tap is made.
The SOS screen is the heart of the app. A large, unmissable red button dominates the screen. Below it, horizontally scrollable helpline cards put Police, Women Helpline, and Railway Security one tap away no number memorisation required.
Administrators get a clean log selection panel and a timestamped SOS alert log everything needed to review, respond to, and report on safety incidents. Three log types: SOS, CCTV, and Crowd Count.
A constrained palette built for accessibility and emotional clarity hot pink signals urgency, deep navy grounds authority, soft neutrals provide breathing room.
Usability testing with 14 participants across two rounds, plus stakeholder feedback from the client implementation team.