Husky ButterWalk

Estimated 4 minute read

Timeline

June 2025 - Present

My Role

UI/UX Design

User Testing

Team

Crystal Shen (UI/UX Lead)

Momoko Shindo (Design & Testing)

Qiulin Chen (Design & Testing)

Me! (Design & Testing)

Overview

Husky ButterWalk is a student-led project building a mobile application for the UW Police Department which digitizes and streamlines their current late-night safety ride service.

Problem

The current system relies on phone calls and leaves students waiting without information.

UWPD currently offers a service known as the Husky SafeTrip, which escorts students home from the hours of 6:30PM to 2AM in a car driven by a uniformed security guard. Right now however...

The service is accessible only by phone call to the police department line, which can be inconvenient for both students and police.

Dispatchers are often managing multiple responsibilities, and answering SafeTrip requests can take time away from higher-priority calls.

And most notably, students are typically asked to wait outside, sometimes for up to 30 minutes, without any notification of when the ride will arrive.

This lack of communication can leave students feeling unsafe, ultimately undermining the purpose of the service itself.

Solution

Our app moves communication to mobile devices, streamlining requests & improving safety.

Husky ButterWalk addresses these issues by digitizing the Husky SafeTrip service through a mobile application designed for both students and drivers. Instead of calling the police department, students can request a ride directly through the app, reducing the burden on dispatchers and streamlining the request process.

The app provides clear confirmation that a request has been received, along with updates on ride status and estimated arrival time, so students are not left waiting outside without information. By improving communication and setting clearer expectations, Husky ButterWalk helps the service function more efficiently while better supporting students’ sense of safety during late-night travel.

User Research

Interviews and surveys shaped our specific design decisions on both sides of the service.

We conducted our user research in two stages.

Interviews

We began by interviewing Husky SafeTrip drivers to better understand what their shifts look like, constraints, and pain points in managing rides. To gain a more firsthand perspective, we also accompanied drivers on rides and observed how the service operates in real time.

Next, we conducted interviews with students to learn about their experiences with late-night travel on campus, their awareness of SafeTrip, and if they were familiar with the service, any concerns that made it difficult or uncomfortable to use.

Surveys

We then moved onto validating our concept on a broader scale, distributing a survey to students with varying levels of familiarity with SafeTrip. The survey included separate paths for students who had used the service, students who knew about it but had not used it, and students who were unfamiliar with it altogether.

The survey featured questions measuring understanding of SafeTrip, satisfaction with the service, and specific points of friction in the current experience. This helped us both measure awareness of the service, and understand whether students would see value in a more accessible ride-request tool.