I was the lead designer for Safety View, a product jointly developed between General Motors and INRIX. Safety View enables safety planners to analyze the roads of their city to identify particularly dangerous areas for pedestrians, micro-mobility users (scooters, bikes, etc.) and motorists alike.
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The Idea
In 2021, the 1.2 trillion dollar, bipartisan infrastructure bill provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity for public agencies to make roads safer for all road users and save lives. As part of a $10M partnership with General Motors, we designed a safety and mobility application called Safety View that aides cities, governments, and businesses to seek grant money for their Vision Zero initiatives.
The Research
Starting in 2019, my team and I conducted interviews with transportation professionals, including engineers, planners, and safety experts, to gather insights into their existing processes, challenges, and requirements for a comprehensive safety solution. Through these interviews, we gained a deep understanding of the needs of transportation professionals and identified the key challenges they faced.
Based on our research, we created several iterations of the user interface. We held focus group sessions with transportation professionals to gather feedback and refine the interface further. We used wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes to validate the user experience and functionality.
Seen here is a collection of my sketches and mind maps to create the initial organization of the product based on a framework of other products in the INRIX IQ suite and the needs of our future users.
Iterations
The information architecture is based on previous INRIX IQ applications, consisting primarily of a map view, side navigation, and detail panel. In time this evolved from low-fidelity designs into fully fleshed out build reference screens.
Clarity surrounding time is important in Safety View, as we provide multiple datasets that have various reporting periods. The user views the map in the context of a set of time, and it’s important to be clear about what time periods each datasets are reporting in your viewport. Thus, a lot of time was spent making the time range panel as clear as possible.
Continued Progress
Safety View continues to grow and evolve to fit our customer’s needs. As of this writing, the product is on version 1.7.3 and more releases are coming.
Through customer feedback and interviews, we heard the need for users to export their data from the product so it can be used in third party software or used for reporting purposes. I have designed a data exporter tool that will be part of the next release to do exactly that.