I'm Alex Edwards, a Brand & Marketing Executive and Full-Stack Developer based in San Diego, California.

When you find yourself in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or perhaps even dangerous situation — time is of the essence. In those scenarios, our phones become both our biggest ally and, in many cases, our biggest obstacle to assistance as well.

The sequence of events that must take place in those situations suddenly becomes arduous and daunting, even if you're lucky enough to still be in possession of your phone. You need to fumble around for the phone, unlock it with either facial recognition, pattern or code, select the appropriate app, choose the appropriate recipient, and then alert them to your danger by call or typing a text. A sequence like that requires focus in even the calmest of situations, nervermind in a situation where you're attempting to escape danger. Or worse - imagine you're trapped, and the person trapping you has gained possession of your phone. What do you do now?

Personal Safety Mobile App(PSMA) is the first voice-activated safety app. Triggered by customizable phrases, PSMA immediately begins to record your surroundings, sends an emergency text message to designated contacts, and generates a link where those contacts can track your location in real-time. No matter the situation, help is always just a few words away.

I was brought in by PSMA to lead the entirety of their visual identity — from initial stategic discussions surrounding brand positioning, through to the execution of the brand identity, app interface, and company website. For simplicity and clarity, this brief will focus on the mobile app, given its importance and the challenges it presented.

While PSMA was the first of its kind in regards to voice activation, we were entering a crowded competitive landscape populated by several established companies that had developed apps geared toward parenting and general family security. Each of these companies had several years of existence under their belt, and in many cases had amassed a sizeable customer base at the time we were developing PSMA.

The core functionality of our app itself created its own UX challenges. Manual trigger of the SOS, in the event the voice activation did not trigger properly, was an absolute necessity for the safety of our customers, and we needed to ensure the path to that action was as resistance-free as possible. GPS tracking screens needed to be clear and informative. Any time-added during any part of the user's activity flow could be the difference between safety and harm, which added increased urgency and weight to every UX decision we made.

Performing a brand-focused competitive analysis gave us a blueprint for how to execute the interface and overall experience of the PSMA app. The nature of our competitors' apps had forced them to shift most of their resources post-launch to customer support — a pivot which meant that aesthetics and usability were constantly being pushed to the backburner. Many had interfaces that looked dated, and key interactions based on usability conventions of years past. We saw this as a major opportunity during market entry, and the design and usability of the PSMA app became a cornerstone of our differentiation.

Colors, color gradients and brand design elements were subsequently chosen to enhance the feelings of trust and safety we sought for the app to create. We incorporated comprehensive white space to minimize clutter and distraction, and straightforward navigation supporting the core user behaviors. Contrast was used to draw attention to important information and actions.

Extensive usability testing guided us in establishing the structure of the interface to minimize resistance during the performance of key user actions. The aforementioned manual SOS button could be switched to the natural thumb hover position of either dominant hand. The GPS tracking screen was augmented with buttons which provided one-touch paths for emergency phone calling, generating directions to the user's location, or viewing vital medical information.

Each aspect of the design and experience of using the app was meticulously crafted with the safety and security of the end-user in mind.

PSMA mobile app entered a public beta for approximately 3-4 months before it was acquired by and folded into a larger competitor. I assisted in executing the asset handoff and onboarding the new company's internal team to our efforts surrounding design and usability. The core features and functionality have since been rolled into the competitor's platform.