Fredericton’s AlliLite Safe App Is Crowdsourcing Community Safety
FREDERICTON–What started as a business plan for lifejackets has turned into a personal safety app for people to report unsafe incidents in their area.
The AlliLite Safe app was founded by Amy Andrews and David Itoafa during their master’s degrees at the University of New Brunswick.
It all started as Lifetrack Safety Systems Ltd., in 2018, through which Andrews and Itoafa worked on creating a lifejacket with tracking and safety features for commercial fishers. The idea was part of a capstone project for Andrews, and she and Itoafa worked on it as part of their degrees.
After running into some obstacles, Andrews said she and Itoafa wanted to move into something more within their age range, and something they were more familiar with.
“We saw a really good opportunity in the personal safety sector with people and really focusing on nights out,” said Itoafa.
While they were working on the lifejacket, Itoafa said they had a whiteboard with three or four different markets they were interested in reaching. One of those was hiking and they started thinking about a product for hikers to make sure they returned safely.
Eventually, they opened the idea up to day-to-day people and how to incorporate safety into their daily lives. That evolved into personal safety, which is where the AlliLite Safe app came from.
They developed the idea through a project at The Summer Institute last year.
Itoafa said he and Andrews know a lot of people who have been in dangerous situations when they have gone out and they wanted to solve the issue. Itoafa said with the beta version of the app they’ve been able to understand the users and what they feel is important for safety.
The current lite version of the app has the main Safety Scoop feature, which allows you to anonymously report incidents on a map in your area.
“The point of posting this stuff anonymously [is] we’re trying to remove that barrier of … people [getting] nervous about the social implications of telling people what exactly happened,” Andrews said. “Maybe they don’t want people to know something happened to them or relate it back to a friend.”
Itoafa said in his age group there’s a potential barrier to being able to report things anonymously and getting information to the public. While creating this app, he wanted to reduce that barrier and allow people to report things and make sure they are heard.
Before they release future versions of the app with more features, the pair wanted to test out the incident reporting within the smaller market of Fredericton. Since the release of the app on April 19, they have been monitoring how users are interacting with it.
They are continuing with focusing on the Safety Scoop feature for the summer. They are receiving feedback from users and seeing what other potential features they could add. Itoafa said the goal is to close the beta version of the app by the end of the summer.
Andrews said she also likes to plan before she goes somewhere. She said when she moved to Fredericton she was familiar with the city but not enough to know if certain areas were safe or not.
“Being able to see information would have been really helpful for me … even picking an apartment, knowing if I’m in a bad spot or not,” said Andrews.
She said the app also allows users to describe what’s happening and has a spot to insert a photo as well.
“It can be anything from maybe something major that you want people to know or it could just be accessibility issues,” said Andrews.
Itoafa said there has been a variety of incidents reported. He said they started off wanting to use it for safety on nights out and reporting uncomfortable situations but people have even reported porcupines in the woods.
Moving into the future of the AlliLite Safe app, Itoafa said they are looking to develop partnerships and see how they can partner with businesses around Fredericton.
Andrews said word of mouth for situations works sometimes if people have a good network, but with the app it’s anonymously accessible to everyone. She said the app can be used anywhere, not just in Fredericton.
“Safety starts with you,” said Andrews.
Jessica Saulnier is a summer intern for Huddle. Send her your story tips: [email protected].