Verizon Family App: Safe Walk & SOS

End-to-end product design for a safety feature in Verizon’s Family App, helping users share location and escalate to an SOS state during urgent situations.

Process overview

  1. Requirements Gathering

  2. Competitive Research

  3. Low-Fidelity Design

  4. High-Fidelity Design & User Testing

  5. Iterative Refinement

Requirements Gathering

The team received an initial set of requirements focused on:

  • Enabling users to share their live location with selected emergency contacts.

  • Providing a clear escalation path to an SOS state in dangerous or uncomfortable situations.

These foundational goals helped define the core user journeys and technical constraints early in the process. Establishing clear success criteria ensured that every design decision supported user safety, simplicity, and trust.

Competitive Analysis

We conducted a competitive review of safety-focused mobile apps and native device safety features to identify design patterns, accessibility considerations, and opportunities for improvement.

This analysis highlighted three key themes:

  • Clarity — users must understand what’s happening in real time.

  • Trust — safety features rely on consistent, predictable feedback.

  • Immediacy — critical actions must be effortless and obvious.

Insights from this research directly informed our design principles and early user flows.

Low fidelity design

In the low-fidelity phase, we created user flows and wireframes for the most common scenarios, focusing on clarity and ease of use. We prioritized minimizing steps for key actions like starting a Safe Walk or triggering SOS.

Feedback from early reviews validated that users valued reassurance of knowing when the system was actively sharing their location or alerting contacts. These insights guided our next phase of refinement.

High Fidelity Design & User Testing

The high-fidelity phase involved iterative updates informed by user research and cross-functional feedback from product and development teams.

We refined the visual hierarchy, button states, and alert language to ensure users felt in control and confident at every step. Visual cues such as live-state animations and confirmation modals helped users clearly understand system feedback and reduced friction in moments of urgency.

User testing confirmed that simplifying actions and improving feedback loops significantly increased confidence in using the feature. Insights from these sessions led to subtle but important refinements in copy, layout, and interaction design.

Sending a Safe Walk and Sending an SOS

Receiving a Safe Walk and SOS

Impact & Learnings

Designing this safety feature for Verizon was a rewarding opportunity to address a complex, high-impact challenge: helping families feel safer and more in control during uncertain moments. Collaborating closely with product and engineering teams, I focused on translating technical systems into experiences that feel simple, reliable, and human.

Through research and user testing, we found that clarity and guidance were key to building trust. By refining the language, prioritizing critical information, and streamlining the flow, we reduced confusion and empowered users to take action with confidence.

This project strengthened my ability to design for both emotional reassurance and functional precision. It also reinforced the importance of cross-functional collaboration in transforming intricate systems into intuitive experiences that genuinely support user wellbeing.

This remains one of my favorite projects because it demonstrates how thoughtful design can make people feel safer through technology, clarity and empathy.