Problem Statement
How might we create an intuitive mobile solution that promotes real estate agent safety during showings and open houses?
According to the National Association of Realtors, 33% of agents have experienced a situation that made them fear for their safety. They spend hours with strangers at showings or open houses, often in isolated locations, and as one agent told us:
“At the end of the day after many long hours of showing homes, I pour myself a glass of wine, sit down on the couch, and think about all the moments that things could have gone wrong.”
Yet, there is no industry-wide solution for employee safety management. Arc Security works directly with brokerages and agents to streamline safety measures into their existing workflows, but they didn't have a fully designed mobile app and wanted additional features aside from a safety timer to advanced the existing product.
Safety solutions should offer automation, discretion, and personalized check-ins for accurate real-world usability.
Research
To understand agents’ needs, I conducted a multi-faceted research approach that included surveys, interviews, and competitive analysis:
Survey: I distributed 237 surveys to agents in Arc’s database, gathering insights on current safety practices, concerns, and feature preferences
Interviews: I conducted 1:1 interviews to explore emotional and situational safety concerns that weren’t fully captured in survey responses
Competitive analysis: I evaluated existing safety solutions (Life360, Guardian, internal brokerage measures) to identify gaps where our design could provide unique value.
From the surveys and interviews, I identified user needs and behavioral patterns to shape our design approach:
Seamless integration: Agents already use informal safety workarounds (e.g., texting colleagues, sharing live location), so a new solution must complement existing habits rather than replace them
Automation over manual check-ins: Many agents prefer automated safety features, as they often forget to manually update colleagues or family during a showing
Discreet emergency activation: Alerts must be low-profile with silent activation options to avoid drawing attention in high-risk situations
Personalized safety settings: Risk tolerance varies among agents, so the system needs customizable check-ins and alerts to adapt to different user needs
Integrating user insights to create intuitive and stress-free safety solutions.
Ideation
Information Architecture:
Arc provided a vision and basic wireframes, which allowed for preliminary user testing to refine the design. Addressing key user pain points, I focused on structuring the homepage to balance clarity, accessibility, and ease of use.
Reducing cognitive overload: Agents needed quick access to critical information without feeling overwhelmed, so I iterated on multiple homepage layouts to ensure that security alerts, agent status, and quick actions were displayed intuitively (with refinements made to the structure based on usability testing)
Prioritizing high-stress usability: Given that agents often operate in high-stress situations, the home bar was split to highlight the most essential functions, keeping frequent actions within immediate reach for quick response
Enhancing recognition and workflow: The Arc icon placement and functionality were refined through testing to make it instantly recognizable and seamlessly integrated into the agent’s workflow, ensuring it could be accessed without hesitation when needed
A personalized and discreet safety solution that integrates seamlessly into agent workflow, prioritizing ease and quick access in high-pressure situations.
Final Solution
1 minute showcase of features
I extracted information from the surveys we conducted on what agents answered to the question “what do you already do to keep yourself safe?”. A big goal was to make the app intuitive by implementing the agent's answers as add-on options for this feature. This screen shows what information agents can request from clients.
As the shortcut feature is already integrated into the iPhone, I wanted to implement this to create an efficient onboarding experience and quick integration into an agent’s phone.
The use of shortcuts on the phone home screen would also make the use of Arc in an emergency setting discreet.
To allow users to be able to focus on their safety with ease while in showings, I implemented a “safety mode” toggle.
Here, the user can use the text-to-911 feature option with “Early Alert” that can send emergency services as well as their chosen emergency contacts the information of where the agent is and who they are with.
"[AGENT NAME] is potentially in danger at [LOCATION], last seen with [CLIENT NAME] [CLIENT PERSONAL INFORMATION]."
For the home screen, I wanted it to be as simple as possible and really honed in on agent responses as to what would be most useful to them at a showing. In short, it would be their events for the day (if they wanted to see future events, they’d go to the calendar) and to be able to create a timer.
The difference between the option to “start a safety timer” and going into safety mode, is that safety mode is for timers that have already been scheduled within a planned event, while starting a new one is for impromptu moments of need.
Reflection
Collaboration, leadership, and lessons from a cross-functional project.
This was my first ever internship and full-scale collaborative project! I’m deeply grateful to the team at Arc for trusting me and my teammates to bring their idea to life. It was an incredibly rewarding experience to work on a a cross-collaborative project that has the potential to improve users’ quality of life, both physically by keeping them safe and mentally by relieving stress. I look forward to the next time I get to work in such an environment and I’m excited to apply these lessons to future projects!
However, like any project, there were constraints, including limited user testing due to the nature of the project and how often the intern team was able to meet, as well a learning curve in terms of effective collaboration and communication across disciplines.
I learned so much throughout this experience, both about design processes and about collaboration in a fast-paced, real-world setting. Some of my biggest lessons included:
Leading design sprints: This project helped me develop confidence in structuring and guiding design workshops, ensuring that every team member had a voice while keeping the process focused and productive
Navigating team dynamics: Learning how to balance fairness and kindness within the team dynamic, ensuring that feedback was constructive, responsibilities were distributed evenly, and communication remained open and respectful was an incredibly important lesson
Collaboration with the development team: This was also my first time working with a development team, and I was initially surprised by the system of checks and balances that naturally emerged, but quickly realized this could make the product stronger. I made it a priority alongside the lead developer intern to reinforce that we weren’t two separate teams, but one unified team working toward a common goal. I believe a stronger technical foundation for myself will help me communicate more effectively with engineering teams and ensure that my designs are both innovative and feasible, so I’ve started learning a little bit of front- and back-end development
While I’m proud of what we accomplished, there are a few things I would approach differently in future projects:
More frequent user testing: Due to time constraints, we were only able to test with a small number of users. While we gained valuable insights, a broader dataset would have helped validate design decisions more effectively. If I could go back, I would push for earlier and more consistent testing cycles
Stronger alignment between design & development teams earlier: While our communication with the development team improved over time, I would have loved to establish an even stronger design-to-development workflow from the beginning, ensuring that feasibility discussions happened in tandem with design ideation