Two years after the Delhi Police’s launched the Himmat app amid great fanfare, it is yet to take off as expected. The mobile application was launched in 2015 to ensure the safety of women travelling alone.
Faulty settings
An independent study conducted by a team of students and professors from Indian Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, has identified a host of factors — from the language settings to listing multiple emergency contacts and accidentally triggering false alarms — that kept the app from becoming popular.
Professor K.M. Pathi, who conducted the study with a group of nine students, said they found technical shortcomings in the user interface, and the technical and promotional features of the app.
Only 31,000 registrations
This, Professor Pathi said, was despite the fact that even by conservative estimates the city had around 79 lakh women, of which 37 lakh come under the age group of 15-39 — the target group.
The study, which was undertaken as part of the curriculum’s Governance and IT project also found that the app had not been promoted well. As a result, only 31,000 users registered.
“We found that there was a need for change in the paradigm itself. The focus is on shifting the narrative from being a distress app to a safety app by promoting it as a must-have for women,” said Prof. Pathi.
He added that the students had been divided into three teams, which began by conducting a survey inside their own college during a fest. They found that most girl students were not even aware of such an app.
Further, he said that the user interface was not very appealing. Citing one example, he said that at the registration stage, the language selection option said ‘Hindi’ in English instead of Devnagri.
Confusing features
Sending distress messages to contacts, was another drawback according to the study. The app, it said, sent out messages to four contacts at a time.
The study suggested that this number could be reduced to two.
“In case of an emergency, the user will want to have a single group of contacts to send out an SOS message,” said the study.
In the run-up to the launch, the police had claimed that the ‘shake’ feature would trigger an alarm. This, they had said, would come in handy to help speed up dissemination of the alert.
Cops take note
However, the study found that the feature can prove confusing as many phones use the shake gesture/motion to open the camera. “Even if the user shakes the phone to use her camera, the application will perceive it as SOS, which can trigger false alarms,” said the study.
The police, meanwhile, said they were analysing the issues highlighted by the study and would incorporate the suggestions in the future. “We appreciate the work done by the students. We will soon incorporate their suggestions into the Himmat app,” said Special Commissioner of Police (Airport, Women Safety and Modernisation) Sanjay Beniwal.
