I love it when I design for the real problems.

Published in

Muzli - Design Inspiration

8 min readNov 20, 2017

As a student who can’t get a design education from the school, I’m self teaching myself. So here’s my first case study. Please consider that I’m not a native speaker. Enjoy :)

Salvus — Explore the world with pride

DESCRIPTION:

Salvus is an app that helps LGBT members to find location that are LGBT-friendly in their current location.

NAME :

Salvus ( /ˈsal.wus/, [ˈsaɫ.wʊs] )

A latin word.

Meaning: safe, well, unharmed, sound, saved, healthy

Inspiration:

“I’m a designer, and my job is to find problems and then to solve them.”

In a progressive world, we still have some ideas that are dominant and not helping us to grow as a society. People are always getting judged by how they think, how they act, and how they live since the foundation of societies. LGBT community is one of those types that got judged because of being different than ‘normal’. They are struggling with these predominant zombie ideas. My idea in opposition to that zombie ideas is to create a platform that is LGBT friendly, so that the members can freely express themselves without any concern.

Defining the Problem:

Even though numbers are growing day by day, it’s still pretty hard to find LGBT-friendly businesses around the world. Most of the people aren’t treating LGBT members as humans, the rights given to them isn’t enough and not equal with given rights to the rest of the citizens.

Pew Research Center

As you can see from the image there are regions that accepts homosexuality but we all know that not everyone can afford to immigrate. Most of Asia, Africa and Middle East aren’t accepting homosexuals as a society.

In western countries it’s much easier to find LGBT-friendly places but the problem I want to solve was “How can we help LGBT members to find places that are friendly in non-LGBT-friendly countries too.” So I picked a country from Middle East, Turkey. Turkey is where I reside currently so I know a little bit about how most of the people treat to LGBT members. Don’t get me wrong I’m not making this app only for LGBT in Turkey. I used Turkey as a testing place because it has general problems that our users would want to exceed.

ADDITIONALLY:

FACT: More than half the LGBT community owns smartphones.
FIGURE: 77% of gay male smartphone owners use them during trips, and no, not just to hook up. (That was only 36%.)

FACT: The LGBT community likes to “explore new destinations”.
FIGURE: 64% was the frequency of “exploring a new destination” while on vacation. 59% indicates gay men like “rest and relaxation” whereas lesbians prefer “visiting family and friends” at 61% (just above R&R at 60%).

FACT: The LGBT community goes everywhere.
FIGURE: Only 1/3 of gay men and lesbians avoid destinations with anti-gay laws. Violence though is a different matter; 81% of gay males those places. Yet boycotts (however well intentioned), don’t seem to work. Only 22% of LGBTs under 35 avoid gay un-friendly places. And for gay parented families, a destination being “family-friendly” trumps “gay-friendly”.

As you can see LGBT members are great tourists! So it’s a win-win if businesses welcome LGBT members kindly.

Place of acceptance is a need for every human-being. LGBT youth in USA thinks that the community in which they live is not accepting of LGBT people.

Cyber-world is where they can feel honest about themselves. Says the %73

User Research:

I used Quora to find answers to my questions, There is great LGBTQI+ community on Quora.

Question 1: As a gay traveller, how does having to hide or even lie about yourself in some countries affect your travel experience?

Person 1: I’ve had problems in hotels in Dublin — albeit nearly 20 years ago — and in Port Macquarie Australia. Both of which are well and truly on the gay tourism map. The Australian one was a hotel that wouldn’t let us stay in a double so we left. It for look like the Bates Motel!

I’ve traveled in India, Nepal and Fiji and booked into a double with my partner with no problems whatsoever.

Travelling to Dubai last year we were fairly cautious and avoided public displays of affection but straight people should there too. We had a double room in a complex with no problems.

Person 2: I’ve never experienced this problem.

I’ve traveled fairly extensively in the Magreb and in the Middle East, where gay sex is a crime in most places.

At no time did I feel as if I had to either lie about myself or to hide.

Nobody ever asked me about my sexual orientation, and nobody followed me around or seemed to be trying to spy on me.

Person 3: I don’t travel to countries where being gay is illegal.

I technically can, but I spent so many years in a community which called gay people immoral, mentally ill, and headed to hell. I had to hide and lie for years.

I don’t want to do that ever again.

Person 4: It sucks. I tend to avoid countries where I have to pretend my husband is my brother or take a hotel room with two beds instead of one. Thankfully, that’s a pretty short list of places these days.

Question 2: What are your concerns about your sexual identity while traveling (abroad or domestic)?

Person 1: In general I have nothing to be concerned about. I’m a cisgender hetero blonde; there’s nothing overt for bigots to pick on.

But I do limit myself sexually when abroad. I have a healthy libido and little to no problem acting on it when I want to. But in cultures that are more sex negative, that’s not nearly as safe to do as it is here in Denmark. Hell even in Denmark I’ve had occasional trouble, although nowhere near to the same degree and thankfully nothing serious so far. So I’m more selective abroad, and more circumspect when I do chose to act.

Summary:

Even though people won’t ask whether if you are gay or not there is pressure to hide your identity. Being online is helping them to express themselves but they aren’t digital beings, they are humans and they need to find places in real life that are open-minded about LGBT community.

User Personas:

After summarising it up I’ve created some potential user personas that can make use of our app.

Questions to Ask myself:

After finding out about the problems and listening users I asked these questions to myself:

How to make travelling more efficient for LGBT members?
What can we provide to them?
How to make a safe local-community for gays to express theirselves freely?

Therefore I started to sketch my ideas out and make this app into reality.

Execution:

The application works like Google maps. It’s a map application that only shows LGBT-friendly places and with the LGBT-users’ feedbacks you can learn about that places much better.

LGBT-friendly businesses can become a Salvus member and add their locations to our map. LGBT community can also add places that they think is LGBT-friendly. Remember there is a report violation button to report any kind of malicious activity.

Other than location info Salvus has events function. Events can be created by community centers or members by using external Meetup application but can share on Salvus.

BRANDING

I’m using Gilbert typeface because it’s fighting for the same cause as Salvus stands for.

You can find detailed information about Gilbert by clicking here.

SKETCHES:

WIREFRAMES:

SCREENS:

PROTOTYPE:

Conclusion:

While researching I’ve learned to empathize more than I did in real life. Designing for real people is a great experience and in my opinion this is what design is in 21st century. This was a successful project for myself but I would love to hear about what would LGBT members say.

Thanks a lot :)