noura ibrahim - ACLU APP

ACLU Mobile Justice App

The American Civil Liberties Union is a non-profit organization founded in 1920. Their mission: "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States”.
The ACLU Mobile Justice App allows users to RECORD encounters with public officials and law enforcement while streaming to their closest contacts and local ACLU office, REPORT any abuse by authorities to the ACLU and its networks, and EMPOWER yourself with up-to-date information regarding your rights as well as important actions and happenings in your area.
Even though so much effort was spent in support of civil rights, people are still suffering from inequality and living in fear of injustice. In 2020 the gap between our beliefs and reality was as clear as the sun on a summer day. Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak, social media was full of news of racist attacks, and police enforcement against people of color, etc.

The Beginning

As a team of three we had the opportunity to work on redesigning the ACLU Mobile Justice App. Our goal was to give users easy access to clear information regarding their civil rights in the case of an emergency, as well as the ability to record and share any incident of rights violations.

Planning

To meet our deadline, we decided to do a two weeks design sprint.

Understanding

We defined our goals and challenges by conducting deep research on the ACLU and their current App. We asked the questions: who are they, what do they do, and why are they offering this service. Additionally, we reviewed the website and the app.
Furthermore, we conducted interviews with experts in the field to help us form a clear vision on the existing issues and the civil rights work.

Outcomes

1- African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos face the highest risk of being killed by police misconduct.

2- People need more accessible resources about their rights in case of emergency.

3- Using social media, youth are getting more involved in movements and civil rights events. Therefore they need better access to resources and information to be prepared.

User Research

This data helped us to plan our users’ interviews. Our challenge: it is not easy to ask users to speak about their experience of using the app since it is a stressful memory which will not be comfortable to narrate. So we decided to take a different approach that approach was everyone can be a witness, everyone can be a victim furthermore all of us should be prepared.
This new turn helped us design the interview script based on scenarios “what will you do if...?”
We combined our interview questions with a user test scenario in order to give more depth to our data, understand the pain points in the current app, and help us create a better user experience in the future.
Test scenario: you were in the mall and you witnessed a person harassing a woman because of her color. Then we gathered insights.

Comparative Analysis

We used a Lightning Demo for our approach.

Competitive Analysis

The Reyets App was the most direct competitor, with higher rates and more positive reviews. So we decide to do a user test analysis following the same script of our interview for the ACLU current app to compare how users navigate the app in the scenarios of :
                                                           1- Proactive individual
                                                           2- Witness
                                                          3- Victim (emergency)

Outcomes:

1- The ACLU Mobile Justice App was confusing, more than 80% of the users couldn’t access their rights, found the notification button, and was so overwhelmed with the long text on each rights section.
2- The Reyets App was direct, accessible, and easy to use.

Data Synthesis

Using the collected data, we made an Affinity Map.

We collected so much we ended up with too many trends. So, when we explored “How might we...?" statements, we realized it needed to be narrowed down through voting.

Personas

Problem Statement:

Darius needs a reliable resource in order to feel prepared for, and survive a potential encounter with law enforcement. He is in constant fear that multiple scenarios might put him at risk, and at the same time, it is difficult to remember all the wide range of relevant rights and laws to these situations.

Problem Statement:

Amira needs go-to resources that provide her with pertinent civil rights information and relevant laws by location so that she can confidently lead her peers in demonstrations. Currently, it is confusing and tedious to sift through all of this information on the internet while trying to find how laws vary by district.