User Research & 1st MVP of pickpocket crime in Barcelona metro
The app that tells you where the pickpockets are in the metro
Intro
Problem Statement
I saw many people getting robbed on the metro of Barcelona and I thought that I should do something about it. I wanted people to know where the pickpockets are in the metro, so they can be alerted about their presence to avoid their belongings to be stolen.
I adopted the design thinking approach to get some initial direction in the project and then progressed into evaluating the findings into building the prototype.
Mainly I worked on user research as the heaviest part of the project and on initial designs of the app.
Duration
June 2019
Role
UX Designer
Personal project
Field Study
I did Field Study research about the current pickpocketing situation of Barcelona metro. I found that:
25% increase of robberies in metro, buses and street since 2018
300 robberies a day
I looked at multiple newspaper articles and police statistics. I found Social Media accounts where locals alerted each other if they saw any pickpockets or similar situations. These groups are ROAR, BCN Helpers, Hartos de Hurtos.
Newspapers’ Captions
Held interviews and met the local groups in person
To build empathy at the start of the project I carried out several interviews of people who were robbed or witnessed a robbery in the metro.
That included some people I knew and all the people I met in the meetup of Barcelona Residents Agains Robbery (ROAR).
ROAR is a FB group of locals (10,000 users) who have come together to reduce the number of robberies to make the city feel safe again. I also met Eliana Guerrero, a local hero, she had been patrolling metro for 15 years.
Ran a survey and got 65 responses
After having done the interviews I had more insight on the situation, now I needed more quantitative data of the behaviour of the metro users when they see a robbery, or when robbed. I sent the survey in English and Spanish to the ROAR group on FB. I also wanted to know why they were in that group.
The Survey Results
I wanted to see the general perception of travelling by metro. I found out that mostly the people who were robbed feel ‘Very Unsafe’ and nobody feels ‘Very Safe’.
How safe do you feel taking the metro?
What helped you to realize that there are pickpockets in the metro near you?
It looks like people rely on Social Media to be informed about the pickpockets' presence.
Also, it’s very important to state that the majority of the people who answered weren’t informed by anything.
I think there is an opportunity to enhance ‘Social Media’ and lower ‘Nobody told me’
People who ‘Witnessed a robbery/been robbed’ are more actionable about calling metro security.
And people who saw that ‘Pickpocket was about to rob’ are more actionable on alerting on social media.
Last time you witnessed a robbery/ or been robbed in the metro. What did you do?
The last time you saw a pickpocket that was about to rob. What did you do?
People are checking the ROAR page or similar to inform their friends about dangerous places and also it’s a way to avoid those dangerous situations themselves. Also, they reach for the community as an important part of these communications.
People rely on these pages and the majority check it more than 4 times a day when going on their commute.
How often do you check ROAR facebook page (or similar social media accounts)?
Why are you following ROAR page (or similar social media accounts)?
Empathy Map
After doing the interviews I collected what users said, did, thought and felt, so I could have a general idea to help to create personas and understand the overall picture of the character.
Personas
I created two types of personas.
The defender of the people - this persona will represent the users that always react, those are the ones that would say “I feel furious”, “I want people to hear and see that there are the pickpockets”, “Get out of here”. These users will produce input for the app.
Shy and careful - this persona will represent people that don’t react or it’s hard for them to react when they see the pickpockets. They would say: “I didn’t do anything next time”, “ I have to be careful”, “I felt hopeless”. These users will consume the info more than producing it.
Identified most critical points in the User Journey Map
I wanted to see the most critical point when taking a metro, this is something I had in mind when doing the interviews.
I created a user journey map. I found out that step 3 was where users felt more vulnerable, it was inside the carriage. This was the place where the majority of robberies happened. I saw this as an opportunity for the app to inform users about the pickpocket’s presence.
Started to ideate a solution
First sketches
I found that people rely on Social Media to get notified about and also to communicate from possible dangers. They reach to the community.
That’s why it would be important to have a real-time input in the app. Geolocation would be an important part of it.
Created a user flow of the main use case
Created a flow of following a use case of creating an alert for other passengers.
Created a prototype to show the basic functionality of the app
I created the prototype following iOS guidelines.
Conclusions
The challenge was to make metro users aware of the presence of pickpockets in metro so fewer people could be robbed, and in the long term, the metro would be a ‘Very safe’ place to be.
I was able to carry my research by reaching out for the victims of it and all the people who are bothered by this situation. All of them want a safer Barcelona but unfortunately, they are more and more pickpockets every day.
I learned that community is an important part of safety. The way to be together and stronger through this is Social Media that is used as a current hack for fixing this situation at some point but hopefully in the future, it will be Metrocop.