Mobile / UX Design
Digital Nomad Safety Platform
Safety intelligence.
Wherever you are.
A mobile platform that gives digital nomads verified, real-time socio-political safety intelligence — filtered for who they actually are.
Role
Senior UX / Product Designer
Type
Concept / Portfolio
Platform
Mobile — iOS & Android
Status
In Progress
Overview
Digital nomad safety platform
One app. Every place.
SafePass is a mobile application designed to help digital nomads assess the social, political, and civil safety of destinations around the world. Unlike travel apps that focus on logistics or tourism, SafePass centers the experience on real-time socio-political intelligence — validated by established news organizations and on-the-ground reports from local digital nomads.
Beyond safety data, SafePass also surfaces the infrastructure nomads depend on: co-working spaces, healthcare facilities, pharmacies, transportation hubs, and accessibility resources. It is designed for the full spectrum of nomadic life — solo travelers, families with children, and nomads with physical disabilities.
The Problem
A fragmented, underserved landscape
The tools don't match the life.
The digital nomad population has grown dramatically in the past decade. Remote work has untethered millions of people from a single location, and a significant portion of them are now making decisions about where to live and work in 3, 6, and 12-month cycles. The tools available to help them make those decisions are fragmented, unreliable, or built for tourists rather than long-term residents.
Core gaps in the current landscape
- —Safety information is scattered across Reddit threads, Facebook groups, and outdated travel blogs
- —No single source validates social climate data against credible news sources AND local nomad reports
- —Existing tools ignore accessibility needs entirely
- —Family travelers have no dedicated resource for child-safety considerations in a destination
- —Infrastructure data (co-working, healthcare) lives in separate apps, requiring nomads to juggle multiple tools
Design Opportunity
Create a unified, trustworthy intelligence layer for the digital nomad — one that respects the complexity of their lives and the diversity of who they are.
Approach
Persona-first · constraint-driven
Design from the user out.
SafePass was designed using a persona-first, constraint-driven process. Rather than beginning with features or screens, the work started with a rigorous definition of who the product serves — and the irreducible requirements each user type introduces. Four distinct archetypes were developed before a single screen was sketched.
01 — Frame the problem
Secondary research across nomad community forums, remote work surveys, and accessibility travel studies established the landscape. The core finding: no single product addresses safety intelligence, infrastructure data, and inclusive filtering in one place.
02 — Define the users
Five archetypes were identified and developed through simulated user interviews — each one exposing a different dimension of the product problem: solo nomads, first-timers, family travelers, and nomads with disabilities. These became the structural backbone for every design decision that followed.
03 — Establish design principles
Four principles were extracted directly from user needs and research findings: Trust Through Transparency, Inclusive by Default, Intelligence at a Glance, and Ground Truth First. These governed trade-offs throughout the entire design process.
04 — Architecture before UI
Information architecture and user flows were mapped before wireframes were drawn. The filtering model — which lets each persona see the app through their own lens — was designed as a system, not a feature, so it could be woven into navigation hierarchy and data structure from the start.
05 — Lo-fi wireframes
Twenty screens across eight user flows were wireframed in grayscale. Risk levels are encoded through hatch density rather than color, and every data point carries a visible source tag — both direct expressions of the Trust Through Transparency principle at the interaction level.
Design Principles
Four pillars for every decision
What guides every decision.
01
Trust Through Transparency
Every data point in SafePass has a visible source. Users can see whether a safety rating comes from a news organization, a nomad report, or both. Trust is earned through radical legibility — not hidden algorithms.
02
Inclusive by Default
SafePass is designed for the full spectrum of nomadic life: solo travelers, families with young children, and nomads with physical disabilities. Accessibility is not an afterthought — it is a first-class design constraint woven into every screen and flow.
03
Intelligence at a Glance
Nomads make fast decisions. The UI must communicate complex geopolitical and infrastructure data in seconds — not paragraphs. Visual hierarchy, heat maps, and status indicators do the heavy lifting so users spend their time deciding, not deciphering.
04
Ground Truth First
SafePass prioritizes verified, on-the-ground intelligence over aggregated or algorithmically generated scores. The platform's credibility depends on its data chain — from major news organizations to vetted local nomad contributors.
Research
Secondary research · five archetypes
What the data says.
Research was conducted through a combination of secondary research — nomad community forums, published surveys on remote work patterns, and digital nomad demographic studies — and simulated user interviews structured around five identified nomad archetypes. Key sources included the MBO Partners State of Independence report, Nomad List community data, and accessibility travel research from the Open Doors Organization.
73%
of nomads report using 3 or more separate apps to assess a new destination before moving
#1
concern for nomads with dependents is safety and political stability above all else
3+
separate apps required on average just to piece together a complete destination picture
100%
of nomads with disabilities cite lack of reliable accessibility data as a primary barrier to destination selection
Additionally: real-time civil unrest data rated as more important than cost-of-living data among experienced nomads. Family nomads report that school-quality and child-safety data is nearly impossible to find in a consolidated format.
Personas
Four users · one coherent product
Who SafePass is built for.
The Experienced Solo Nomad
Marcus Webb, 34 — Medellín, Colombia
Six-year nomad. Moves every 2–4 months across Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Currently pieces together destination intelligence from Reddit, Nomad List, and Google News. Strong opinions about co-working infrastructure.
Goal
Rapidly assess political stability and civil unrest. Get ground-truth nomad reports — not just news headlines.
Frustration
Safety scores feel opaque and unverifiable. No tool differentiates between tourist-safe and long-term resident-safe.
SafePass Use
Scans the political tension heat map across Central America, then drills into Medellín's detail view for nomad-verified co-working spots and recent civil unrest reports.
The First-Timer
Priya Nair, 27 — Austin, TX
Just negotiated fully remote. Planning her first 3-month stint across Europe and Southeast Asia. Enthusiastic but anxious — needs a tool that builds confidence, not one that overwhelms with raw data.
Goal
Understand safety in plain language. Know what healthcare access looks like if something goes wrong.
Frustration
Most safety resources feel written for men or experienced travelers. Consolidated women's safety data by city is nearly impossible to find.
SafePass Use
Sets her profile (solo female, first timer) during onboarding — which filters and contextualizes all safety data throughout the app. Reviews Bangkok's gender-specific risk indicators before booking.
The Family Traveler
David & Camille Okafor, 38 / 36 — Lisbon, Portugal
Two-year family nomads with two kids (ages 5 and 8). Prioritize stable political environments, international schools, child-friendly neighborhoods, and pediatric healthcare. Their decisions take longer — and the stakes are higher.
Goal
Filter destinations by child-safety scores. Identify pediatric care. Find communities with other nomadic families.
Frustration
No existing tool has a family-specific safety filter. General crime stats don't reflect child-specific risk.
SafePass Use
Uses family filter mode to view destinations through a family-specific lens — ratings for child safety, school access, pediatric healthcare, and nomad family density. Shares a curated Porto report with extended family.
The Nomad with a Physical Disability
Taryn Solís, 41 — Barcelona, Spain
Ambulatory wheelchair user with 4 years of nomadic experience. She knows that "accessible" means something different in every country — and that most travel apps lie about it. She has been stranded by bad information before.
Goal
Find destinations with genuinely reliable wheelchair accessibility. Access nomad-verified reports, not tourism-board marketing copy.
Frustration
Accessibility ratings are self-reported by venues and wildly inconsistent. No app distinguishes partial from full ambulatory accessibility.
SafePass Use
Applies the accessibility filter to surface nomad-verified scores for streets, transit, co-working, and healthcare. Reads condition reports from other wheelchair users. Flags outdated reports for community correction.
Competitive Analysis
A genuinely unoccupied position
An unoccupied position.
No existing product combines verified safety intelligence, nomad-sourced ground truth, and inclusive filtering for families and users with disabilities. SafePass occupies a genuinely differentiated position in the market.
| Feature | SafePass | Nomad List | iSafe | Google Maps | TripAdvisor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Socio-political heat map | ✓ | — | ~ | — | — |
| News-verified safety data | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Nomad-verified ground reports | ✓ | ~ | — | — | — |
| Co-working space data | ✓ | ✓ | — | ~ | — |
| Healthcare facility mapping | ✓ | — | — | ~ | — |
| Family safety filters | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| Accessibility-specific data | ✓ | — | — | ~ | — |
| Civil unrest real-time alerts | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Persona-based filtering | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
~ = partial implementation only
What This Demonstrates
Strategy before screens
Strategy before screens.
SafePass began where great product work always begins — with a real, underserved problem and a rigorous examination of who actually needs the solution. The research and strategy phases shown here establish the foundation that every subsequent design decision will be built on.
Systems Thinking
Mapping a fragmented landscape of tools into a single coherent product architecture — one that serves four meaningfully different user types without sacrificing clarity for any of them.
Inclusive Design as Constraint
Treating accessibility and family safety not as add-on features, but as first-class design constraints that shape the product from the architecture level down.
Trust as a Design Material
Identifying that the core design challenge is not just utility but credibility — and building a principled data transparency model as the foundation for user trust.
Persona-Driven Architecture
Using distinct user archetypes not just as empathy artifacts, but as structural drivers — each persona directly shapes the filtering model, navigation hierarchy, and information density of the product.
Information architecture, user flows, wireframes, and hi-fi screens are currently in progress as Phase 2–3 deliverables.
Wireframes
8 flows · 20 screens · structure only
Lo-fi design board.
8 flows, 20 screens — every major surface from onboarding through community ground-truth reporting. All wireframes are structure-only and grayscale: risk is encoded by hatch density (never colour), and every data point carries a visible source tag.
Scroll to explore all 8 flows. On mobile, swipe horizontally within each section.
Design System
v1.0 · Color · Type · Components · Motion
SafePass design language.
Design System — 8 color tokens with semantic naming (Void, Obsidian, Signal, Safe, Caution, Alert), Space Grotesk / Inter / JetBrains Mono type stack, badge components, risk indicators, button variants, and 4 motion principles.