What Were They Doing There Anyway?
About the CSO
HarassMap is striving to build a society in Egypt that guarantees the safety of all people from sexual and gender based violence. They crowdsource SMS and online reports of sexual harassment.
The team
Front row: Mirna (designer, Egypt), Enas (CSO representative, Egypt), Peter (data/design, UK), Alia (CSO representative, Egypt), Vaishnavi (journalist, India)
Back row: Pudo (data and tech, Germany), Ismail (designer, Egypt)
About the topic
According to a 2013 UN survey 99.3% of Egyptian women had reported being sexually harassed, often whilst walking down the street in broad daylight or whilst taking public transport.
HarassMap came to Data4Change to improve the way they collected and presented their data to the authorities and to the women effected.
A look at the data
The HarassMap team brought crowdsourced data from their online mapping tool to the sprint. This included narrative reports of sexual harassment and geo location data of where attacks had been reported. The team had a lot of information to process, and worked across a few concepts during the workshop. They explored categorising different experiences, making the reporting process more efficient, and revising the structure of database to be more machine-readable.
Their objectives
The team quickly settled on a strong concept and a clear objective of what they wanted to achieve with the project. How can we amplify the power of the phrase "What were they doing there?", a common phrase used to 'victim blame' those who have experienced incidences of harassment.
The old map
This was how HarassMap displayed their data before the design sprint. See how the team met their objectives and how the map and reporting experience changed as a result of the design sprint!
Some of the team’s initial sketches and thoughts.
ResultsAt the sprint the HarassMap team worked tirelessly to create a swathe of product concepts for them to take home to Cairo. This included a reimagined reporting tool, and a simple yet effective prototype for a data visualisation using the common threads from narrative experiences submitted to the platform
After the sprint, Data4Change and alumni from the workshop supported HarassMap to redesign its website and reporting tool as well as developing a mobile app to report sexual harassment.
Intro screen
The prototype starts by giving the user some context and inviting them to find out more about the women’s stories. The HarassMap team deconstructed the narratives submitted by Egyptians who had been sexually harassed in Cairo. The stories provide an answer to this question (waiting for a bus, shopping, going to meet a friend), linking places, incidences, and responses, via common threads in the data.
Watch this screen capture video of the visualisation.
Putting it all together
There was a lot of information to bring into one screen, but the map and timeline helped declutter the layers of information. A dynamic timeline-based map (web users manipulate the slider to view incidents across time) serves as an archive of events across the city, helping residents make decisions about which path may be safest to take, or which areas have become harassment hotspots. A concept for a 'quick-pin' reporting tool was also built on top of this map.
The story cycle
The HarassMap team's concept was designed around encouraging users to share their experiences, and react to those already shared. This screen shows how users can respond/support those brave enough to share their experiences, and also invites the user to contribute at a time they may feel more encouraged and supported to do so.
Post workshop
After the sprint Data4Change and alumni from the sprint supported HarassMap to redesign its website and reporting tool as well as developing a mobile app to report sexual harassment.
