Spotting Red Flags

How SafeSpace can help you deal with conflicts and emotional challenges

Year Project Type Platform Role
2024 B2C Mobile Product Designer
UX Designer
Illustrator
SafeSpace Home screen.

Your private shrink

Do you avoid your flatmate? Did your boss scream at you? Just noticed a red flag from your partner? Knowing what to do in these scenarios it’s hard and not all of us are ready to confront them. The stress provoked by these, can undermine our mental well-being and provoke anxiety and depression. SafeSpace can help you deal with these kinds of emotional and communication problems. Let me show you how!


What’s wrong?

After a bad day in the office, Emma (Persona) keeps thinking about what happened. It was a stressful week and her boss yelled at her. She likes her job and the team and actually, her boss is not bad at all… but she doesn’t know what to do, ignore it, talk it through, or go to HR… She opens SafeSpace and types how she feels.

Emma checks the Homepage and starts writing about her day

Get guidance

After her inquiry, SafeSpace creates an illustrated guide with actions she can take to improve her situation.

She goes through the step-by-step guide and the learning portal

Journal Entry

Personal writing helps Emma process emotions, reduce stress, improve self-awareness, and enhance clarity in decision-making and communication.

She adds more text to her draft and saves the entry in the Journal

Not everyone is ready

Insights from the UX research
Survey (80 respondents)


1. Lack of Emotional Readiness:

Respondents don’t feel emotionally equipped to handle difficult situations in their relationships approximately 40% of the time.

2. There is a need:

70% of respondents looked for information or resources to learn about healthy communication in relationships. Also, their main barrier to learning was: “Not knowing where to start”

3. Emotional Expression:

The average comfort level was 3.3 out of 5.


User interviews (6)


1. High Interest:

Everyone shows interest in the topic! Although being a personal and delicate topic all of the users were excited to talk about it. This means everyone seeks support at some point in their lives.

2. Broad topic:

Some users talked about their romantic partners, others about co-workers others about family members… In every context we are exposed to challenges and conflicts.

3. Openness & Privacy

Users were very open to using an App to help them with relationships and personal growth but Privacy and Security are always a concern.

Sketching it all out

From the UX research I gathered some keywords that resonated in my head while I started sketching. Here are some of them:

- Vault, private journal
- Personalized content
- Safe environment
- Guide, learn
- Shared consciousness


The first sketch and the final Hi-Fi prototype Homepage
First sketch of the Journal and the final Hi-Fi prototype
Mid-Fi Prototype flow

Reduce, reduce, and reduce

Like the secret for all good sauces, reduction. All along the design process there is always the impulse to add things, more features, more buttons, more utilities. To end up with a Swiss knife app that does nothing right. Here are some examples of dismissed ideas:

Gamification of the learning process can be useful to keep users coming back, but in this case was a distraction from the real goal: Help users with their conflicts.

Uncluttered screens help users know what to do, by clearing unnecessary elements the "To do Action" is more clear for users.
The action button is where it affects change, not like in the old version, where you don’t see what is affected by your action.

After the usability test, the user felt confused by the navigation and didn’t know where the notes were or if he had finished the task. I tried to simplify more the options for the user, so it wouldn’t get confused. The idea of a switch between two modes (main actions) came to me… Was a decision pretty close to the delivery date, which meant extra work/stress, but I don’t regret it at all!

Old and new version of the navigation bar

Private, yet full of personality

SafeSpace brand has to feel calm, secure, and trustworthy. That’s why its type is elegant and functional.

Type had to be elegant and serious at the same time

Colors are useful to convey feelings and most of products use them wisely, like Calm, a meditation and sleep app, predominantly uses shades of blue and green to evoke feelings of relaxation and tranquility. But I wanted to look as neutral as possible, plus I got really good feedback from users when showing it to them: “It looks professional and trustworthy!” One said.

Incorporating humor and hand-drawn illustrations creates a more approachable, relatable experience, helping users feel at ease and fostering a deeper sense of trust.

Illustrations made by me

Conclusion and Takeaways

The topic matters:

Although I didn’t ask intimate questions the topic itself is sensitive. So next time I’d pay more attention to the space where the interview is taking place and start with some general questions, not so direct to the topic.

Insights only:

While working on a project like this, it’s very easy to get distracted by first ideas or extra features nobody needs. I had to go back to the insights from the interviews to make sure I designed what the users wanted and not what I wanted to design.

Go to therapy:

Working on this project has been very fulfilling, knowing that I’m contributing to something that can genuinely help people navigate their emotional challenges and improve their relationships. In a world where mental health is often overlooked, it feels rewarding to create a tool that encourages open conversations and offers support. This project has reinforced my belief in the importance of mental well-being and the power of design to make a real impact.