Link to Heroku | Link to Basic Wireframe | Link to Trello Board | Link to Google Doc with Extra Info and User Research | Link to Presentation
Ally.io is an anonymous, virtual “buddy” to help connect survivors of sexual violence (or their friends/family) with support resources via a conversation-like interface. This app is presented in manner that maintains a sense of anonimity, as during our user testing we found that people wanted the app to be "covert", meaning that people who look at the app from a distance wouldn't know what it was (as in a perpetrator), and we convey this through the apps name "Ally", which doubles for the 'bot's' name (pronounced Allie) and its true meaning (an ally to survivors of sexual violence).
We’re not trying to solve the entire problem of sexual assault/trauma with our app - we can't - but we can try to inspire communication and survivor empowerment by bridging the gap between people who need help, and professionals who are qualified to do so.
- Me ---> Yes ---> Depressed emoji ---> Violated
- Me ---> No ---> Resources
- Project Manager
- Front-end (SASS, Angular)
- Front-end (Angular)
- Back-end (Satellizer)
- Back-end (SQL, Sequelize, Express)
- S.E.A.N. Stack (SQL, Express, Angular, Node)
- Gulp
- SASS
- Satellizer
- Bootstrap
- Sequelize
- Rainn.org
- Savacenter.org
- b-heard.org
Over the course of our user research we came across a wide array of findings. Most users could not think of any resources to support survivors of sexual violence besides Google, highlighting the need for an application like this. All users seemed to agree that the app should take no personal information from the user due to the need for privacy/safety. Users also discussed they wanted a quick way to "escape" from the site if need be. One tricky finding was that users want to "trust" the application, which is hard to instill via an app.
- Flesh out all user flow routes
- Make app work more like a real chatbot, with text boxes and sentiment analysis.
- Immediately connect users with a live professional
- Google maps search feature for shelters/help centers, searchable by state & zipcode
- Resources menu divided into categories so Users can access specific resources in as few clicks as possible