StrangerDanger

Why we’re building StrangerDanger…

“Tackling student safety at Ohio State University”

It’s Friday afternoon and as I’m walking to a banquet at the Blackwell Inn, I pull out my phone, scroll my Facebook feed, and come across a very interesting Lantern article, titled “Opinion: Women’s safety at Ohio State sometimes feels like a joke”. With such a title I had to read. But as I read through this opinion piece about one girl’s experience on campus I was rightfully concerned for her safety and even more saddened by the fact that this may’ve happened to many more women on The Ohio State University’s (tOSU) campus.

But this isn’t the first time this kind of stuff has been brought to the attentions of tOSU students. After I finished the article, I couldn’t help but note that there has been a major push for campus, but more importantly, women's safety awareness at Ohio State. Starting with the It’s On Us Campaign, that aimed to shift the way students thought about sexual assault and asked students to pledge to create an environment where sexual assault is unacceptable. Additionally, this past USG elections heavily focused, and rightfully so, on campus safety.

Reflecting on all of this I couldn’t help but feel that I wasn’t doing enough. I had personally taken the It’s On Us pledge and certainly made damn sure no sexual assault ever occurred on my watch… but it still seemed like a fleeting act. Obviously I couldn’t be everywhere to enforce campus safety but I knew there had to be a better way, using technology, to make sure students felt safe at Ohio State. So that’s when I gathered a team and went to work on StrangerDanger.

At the push of a button you can notify all of your In-Case-of-Emergency (ICE) contacts that you are in danger.

What’s the App?

App Icon

StrangerDanger is first and foremost a safety app. Say you’re walking home alone from a night out at the bars. It’s dark and you can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching or following you. You fear for your safety and want to notify loved ones of where you are so they can help take the appropriate measures.

App home screen

Alert sent to my ICE…me (for demo purposes)

With this app, at the push of a button you can notify all of your In-Case-of-Emergency (ICE) contacts with a personalized message (1) indicating that you are worried about your safety and (2) providing them with a GPS link to your exact location which they can open up in Google Maps. Additionally if you’re currently being attacked and can’t easily get to the app, rapidly shaking your smartphone will also send out alerts.

StrangerDanger comes with a suite of features, apart from the SMS notifications to ICE contacts, that we hope will be useful in emergency situations.

App options menu

App preferences

Police: From the app you can be directed to / get a list of the nearest police stations to your current position.

Camera: If your property was broken into, you need to document an assault (bruises), or you need to get a photo of a perp running off with your wallet, you can easily launch your phone’s camera and get photographic evidence. Ever heard the saying, “take a picture it’ll last longer”?

Location alerts: Get realtime notifications if, while traveling (walking, running, driving, etc..), you enter a high crime rate area.

More…: Future features include (1) notifications of crime around you the instant it’s reported. (2) Once an initial alert has been sent, sending your contacts repeated updates of your location every 5mins until you confirm you’re ok. And (3) preset alerts, before you leave a location, to have contacts check-in on you after a certain amount of time, facilitated via the app and SMS.

I HOPE YOU NEVER HAVE TO USE IT.

Conclusion

I’m very happy to be playing a hand in trying to improve campus safety at tOSU but it wasn’t an easy decision to build this tool. StrangerDanger is a great app for safety but I hope you never have to use it…in that I hope you never encounter a situation where you need this (but just in case the Android version is out now).