After Dark
How might we co-design public transit to engender a sense of safety for women traveling at night?
My Role:
Design Researcher, Visual Designer, Co-Design Facilitator
Tools & Approach:
Co-Design, Diary Study, Field Observation, Interview
Overview
Public transportation services in metropolitan cities in Indonesia often lack gender sensitivity, resulting in safety concerns for women's mobility being overlooked. Notably, existing interventions have predominantly targeted middle-class women, neglecting those from low income sector who face unique challenges. Compounding the issue, economic barriers force many women in this demographic to work night shifts, relying exclusively on public transportation due to affordability constraints.
This project seeks to address disparities by focusing on understanding the experiences of low-income women traveling after dark using public transportation. The goal is to design contextual approaches that enhance and make public transportation safer and more accommodating for women from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in Indonesia. From this, I contributed to developing and facilitating the co-design process, resulting in six design opportunities, two of which involved building tangible design concepts shown below.
This design concept stems from the insight that at angkot (public transit minivan) stops, women seek to establish a sense of safety through regularity and familiarity. In Indonesia, these stop points are informal, usually lacking signage but often occupied by street vendors who operate until midnight. Building on this insight, this design involves modifying the stalls to include portable benches, signs, and sheds as spots for women to wait while also serving street vendors' customers for multiple purposes.
One of the insights we discovered is that women seek to establish a sense of safety through regularity and familiarity. I helped redesigning the existing bus stop model in Indonesia to include safety components that enhance visibility with proper lighting and a transparent back wall, promoting transparency among people.
RESEARCH PROCESS
How are the experiences of women
blue collar workers when traveling at night using public transportation?
This study aimed to enhance understanding of women's safety and mobility in Indonesian urban areas beyond Greater Jakarta, focusing on Medan, Semarang, and Surabaya. Recognizing women's right to safely explore and access city resources, the research delved into every aspect of their travel experience, identifying factors influencing safety perceptions at night, challenges faced, and their impact on mobility and travel choices. In sum, these are the main design research questions:
How do women perceive safety when traveling with public transportation at night?
What factors influence perception of safety
while traveling at night?
What challenges do women encounter when traveling at night? How do they impact mobility and choices?
Research Method
37 person
Women respondents from Medan, Semarang and Surabaya, Indonesia.
22 days
total of diary study in three cities in Indonesia.
75 hours
of total interview with respondents.
Diary Study
I employed a diary study as a key methodology
to investigate safety perceptions.
Participants recorded experiences, behaviors, emotions, and thoughts during nighttime travel.
Over four days, 37 respondents from three cities in Indonesia logged details such as visited places, transportation used, onboard thoughts and feelings, and clothing choices.
I designed and oversaw the diary study to capture women's night time travel journeys, revealing emotions, activities, and experiences at each touchpoint.
Read my process here.
In-Depth Interview
Following the completion of diary entries,
I conducted vital in-depth interviews to elucidate
and augment the information recorded.
This step was essential to clarify
diary entries and obtain additional contextual details regarding how safety perceptions impact respondents' mobility.
Shadowing / Direct Observation
The third method employed was shadowing, involving selected respondents observed on their nighttime journeys home. It provided direct context and a firsthand experience, enriching the overall understanding of the research.
Key Research Insights
From the research process, this project had resulted personas and general insights.
Four personas were identified through the synthesis process. These personas are artifacts that helped the team differentiate needs, beliefs, journeys, and challenges, as 'women' is not a uniform category. In this case, I helped with the synthesis process and visualized these personas.
Persona User Journeys
While observing the respondents’ experiences, we noticed that their thoughts, pain points, emotions and underlying beliefs also vary according to the travel times and locations where they transit. So, we also sketched out each persona’s journey from the first mile to the last. Swipe to see all!
Key Research Insights
Though they may share similar travel patterns, the four personas experience different emotions and see their situation through different personal lens. These are the insights we uncovered during the fieldwork and co-design workshop.
Beyond an intuition, being safe also demands a certain skill set.
Safety is viewed as a skill set to decrease vulnerability, emphasizing the importance of being an observer, preparing for worst-case scenarios, anonymity, familiarizing with travel routes, and building companionship with other commuters.
Women adjust their safety parameters based on their familiarity with an environment
Safety is viewed as a skill set to decrease vulnerability, emphasizing the importance of being an observer, preparing for worst-case scenarios, anonymity, familiarizing with travel routes, and building companionship with other commuters.
Women’s perception of safety is shaped more by personal stories than the news.
The women we met prioritize stories from family and friends over news or online articles. Verifying information isn't a priority; they instinctively trust it as factual coming from people they believe care about their well-being, making family and friends reliable sources for safety information.
DESIGN PROCESS
How might we co-design public transit to engender a sense of safety for women traveling at night?
Upon identifying insights , the team conducted a co-creation workshop involving project stakeholders and respondents to develop design solutions. My responsibilities included designing an immersion session to provide context and foster empathy among stakeholders regarding women traveling at night, facilitating the co-creation session, and ultimately finalizing the design concept and prototypes.
Stakeholder mapping to understand broader constituents
Advocacy meeting with city governments, NGO, CSOs.
Conducting immersion and co-design workshop with stakeholders.
Immersion
Subsequently, we carefully consider the most appropriate technology for each of the conceptual tools we have selected to ensure they effectively deliver the features we intend to design. Despite being at the prototyping stage, our goal is to closely align the implementation with the intended concept.
I designed tools that consisted of a 'creative brief' and shadowing guides used by project stakeholders during immersion sessions. The brief is used to help give participants the context of women's experiences when traveling at night. While the guide is utilized to prompt focus when stakeholders conduct immersion in the field.
Giving co-design participants agency to take actions.
As the project engaged policy-makers in the co-creation process to develop design solutions, it was crucial to remind them of the significance of their contributions to women who depend on public transport at night. Each participant received heartfelt letters and postcards from the respondents to enhance their agency in creating the most effective solutions.
Using artifacts as a lens for participants to see what women have gone through.
Efforts, hassles, and worries women have to experience to feel safe when using public transportation at night are often overlooked. This includes their habit of using everyday objects like pins as weapons they can use when attacked. The brief given to participants contains some of the 'secret weapons' that women had to carry daily to feel safe, like pins, hairspray, and a sharp pen.
Giving context of city situation
Before the co-creation session began, the stakeholders had to be updated about the current state of their city to set a clear start. For this reason, the Newspaper becomes the best medium to inform stakeholders involved in the co-creation session. I collected two types of news articles were collected articles (1) those that documented crimes against women in the city and (2) those that documented public transport issues that create inconvenience for its users.
Co-Design Workshop
I then facilitated a co-create session with two groups of stakeholders consisting of women who travel at night using public transport, city governments, academia, designers, architects, private sectors, and transportation planners.
The session lasted for one day, and in the end, we were able to create two physical design concepts as explained in the outcomes. Slide through the documentation here.
Impact
Indonesian Ministry of Transportation is set to launch its “Buy The Service” programme in 2020. The overarching objective of this initiative is to holistically improve public transportation services in a way that is more convenient and inclusive for all passengers. Coincidentally, Medan was selected to be one of the 6 cities targeted by this programme. The Medan City Transportation Office saw an opportunity to redesign bus stops throughout the city to provide safer transit points for passengers. As part of its efforts to gather ideas from all corners of the city, Medan City Transportation Office collaborated with Pulse Lab Jakarta and UN Women to organise a co-design workshop, specifically focused on how to develop a safer transit ecosystem for women.
