Mobile App DevelopmentMontenegro
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Work
Mobile App Development For Violence SOS Hotline
A mobile app built with the Government of Montenegro and the United Nations Development Programme, so victims of domestic violence can reach help immediately, safely and without being noticed.
Project snapshot
- Location
- Montenegro, North Macedonia
- Services provided
- Development period
- Oct 2020 – May 2021
Project
Be Safe (Budi sigurna) is a mobile app that helps victims of domestic violence reach support quickly and discreetly. We designed and developed it in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme and government institutions in Montenegro.
The app brings emergency response, trusted contacts and educational resources into one place, built around a single hard constraint: the person using it may be in the same room as the person they need protection from. Every design decision follows from that.
The challenge
For someone living with an abuser, asking for help is the most dangerous moment. A phone call can be overheard, and an obvious safety app on the home screen can put the victim at greater risk if it is found. The app had to let a victim summon help and reach resources without any of it being visible to the person they live with, and it had to work under stress, in seconds. It also had to hold the victim's trust: no data copied, no data stored.
When calling for help isn't safe, one tap is enough.
Resources
A direct line to the people who can act.
Victims can reach trusted people through real-time chat and keep emergency contacts on hand. Support comes from someone who already knows the situation, without a public trace of the conversation.
Know your options before the moment you need them.
The app holds practical guidance in one place: important helplines, legal-rights information, self-defence tutorials and domestic-violence prevention protocols. It is there to be read quietly and safely, ahead of a crisis or during one.
Safe mode
Help summoned from a screen that doesn't look like help.
The alert control is hidden inside the app, so an abuser looking over the victim's shoulder sees nothing that gives it away. One tap sends an immediate alert to an SOS centre, which calls the police and locates the victim by GPS. If someone looks closer, a tap switches the app into a safe mode showing ordinary women's-topics articles, and locking the screen or leaving the app arms the disguise by default.
Built so the only person who can see it is the person who needs it.
A mobile platform developed in collaboration with the Government of Montenegro and the United Nations Development Programme.
North Macedonia version
One launch led to another country.
The successful launch in Montenegro led the UNDP office in Skopje to ask for an adaptation to North Macedonia's market. Through regular online sessions with their working group we built a similar app for iOS and Android, with a multilingual option covering the country's main ethnic groups.
Be Safe, by the numbers
- App downloads since launch
- 6,000+
- Cases solved through the app
- 30+
- App store star rating
- 4.6
- SOS helplines integrated
- 3
Links
- UNDP MontenegroMobilna aplikacija Budi sigurna
- PressAplikacija Budi sigurna na iOS platformi
The client says...
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