Travel Buddy

Travel buddy is a mobile application for urban women, which helps them find a company while traveling point to point within city in order to avoid crimes against women. Through this application, we attempt to empower the women and create a safer environment for women.

Considering the crimes against women, understanding the scenario in the urban areas through first hand information from users of diverse demographic data as well as analysing multiple application available in the market, multiple ideas were generated that attempt to solve safety problems of women.

The final idea is named as ‘Travel Buddy’ and has the following features –
The application can record routine behaviours, that is, time, place and mode of transport. It can share GPS locations to beloved ones. For searching a travel buddy, results can be sorted according to name, time to reach, connection and intersection. The reliability rating feature helps in making decisions to trust the buddy or not. The application can give suggestions for buddies in routine paths as it records routine behaviours. Additionally, application can be used to share fares with autorickshaws or taxis. Application also supports notifying to beloved ones not using the application, through standard SMS message.

Further as the solution was conceptualised, it can be used not only for females but also for males.

Few questions still remain unanswered are as follows –

• Does this application really empower people or creates another dependency?
• How to prevent spam? Should there be any access restrictions for males/females?
• What makes people trust others? Surname, Language, Place of work, Place of residence, Religion, Caste …
• How much information to be shown to strangers? Name, photo …
• Should the user have control privacy setting? Available, Willing to help, Busy, Emergency only.
• Will the privacy setting give rise to information access problems?
• Accuracy of reliability rating?
• Ensuring reliability of user?
• Detecting false alarms?