RedLine is a wearable bracelet + parental app that protects children from the red line: the boundaries that shouldn't be crossed.
Project Overview
RedLine is a child wearable bracelet that is integrated with a parental mobile app. Designed with children's joy and autonomy in mind, the wearable is a discreet bracelet that monitors only concerning interactions. With integration to the mobile app, which empowers parents through real-time alerts, RedLine detects potentially dangerous situations for children, like verbal threats, sexual abuse, or bullying. RedLine redefines child safety in the digital future, prioritizing safety without compromising trust.
RedLine was created as part of a weekend-long design hackathon competition, Carnegie Mellon's UXA XHacks 2024, where the theme was to design for the children of tomorrow.
RedLine was created as part of a weekend-long design hackathon competition, Carnegie Mellon's UXA XHacks 2024, where the theme was to design for the children of tomorrow.
My Contributions
On a team of 3, I helped research and define our user space, frame our solution and features, and design the branding and visual identity of our products. Specifically, through ideation to delivery, I brainstormed ways that child wearables could be a detection and prevention solution for child sexual abuse (CSA), and produced the content and visuals for the wearable, app logo, and marketing.
Our design project was ultimately awarded Best Presentation and was a top 3 finalist out of 15 teams consisting of undergraduate and graduate students.
Our design project was ultimately awarded Best Presentation and was a top 3 finalist out of 15 teams consisting of undergraduate and graduate students.
In the future, we envision devices that can be smaller but more powerful, and our bracelet conveys that idea. Functioning as a wearable Siri with a privacy-first approach, the pendant's speech recognition is only alerted when there are words or phrases deemed sensitive by our algorithm, and only records concerning interactions where the child is involved.
When a child wears the RedLine bracelet, this app is what connects the parent or guardian to their child. From its integration with the bracelet, the RedLine app analyzes audio cues from the pendant to alert the parent of signs of distress their child may be facing.
These alerts provide information on the nature of the perceived threat so that parents can take appropriate action. Offering detailed insights and identifying patterns, parents can review past incidents and proactively address recurring concerns.
View our hi-fi prototype here.
These alerts provide information on the nature of the perceived threat so that parents can take appropriate action. Offering detailed insights and identifying patterns, parents can review past incidents and proactively address recurring concerns.
View our hi-fi prototype here.
Discrete Child Bracelet
Safety App for Guardians
An Evolving Tool Set
We began our focus on detecting and preventing child sexual violence, but the nature of our app makes it viable to tackle other situations involving a child's wellbeing and safety. Our app therefore includes detection, notification, and prevention measures for a variety of dangerous situations a child might encounter.
2. Defining the Problem Space + User Research (5-9 years)
We just wrapped up the hackathon this weekend - contact me at peggyshen4@gmail.com if you'd like to know more!
3. Visual Design and Branding
In the case of the wearable, we designed the bracelet with children’s joy and autonomy in mind: the red knot string is a symbol of protection in Chinese culture, and we drew inspirations from it to create a product that is light and non-intrusive to the kid, acting as a fashion accessory that symbolizes luck rather than a tool for child surveillance.
5. Reflections
My first design hackathon! It was a rewarding experience and I'm glad I got to participate in a hackathon before I graduated. I really enjoyed the process of ideating and producing a solution with an open-ended prompt, without the restriction of class grading, where the specifications are often much more constrained.
Because of the time-constrained nature of a hackathon, I learned how to manage my time between a variety of tasks: specifically, balancing our prototyping and designing with researching and writing time.
As a team, our biggest accomplishment was tackling what we think is such an important issue. Despite prevention measures being difficult to put into practice, we hope our solution is a starting point to helping detect and prevent CSA. Although child exploitation hopefully never happens, we hope our bracelet and app combination can also bring parent and child together by teaching the parent better ways to communicate with their child.