HerShield

01 · Overview

About the project

HerShield is a women's safety mobile platform that bundles SOS alerting, live location sharing with trusted contacts, safe route planning and a silent camera for discrete evidence capture. The product prioritizes fast, obvious interactions under pressure rather than dense feature screens.

The system pairs a React Native mobile app with backend APIs, map integrations, push notification pipelines and cloud storage for evidence and audit trails.

02 · Problem

What we set out to solve

Generic safety apps often bury emergency actions under menus, account flows or unnecessary steps — the exact moment where friction costs time. Women navigating unsafe routes need one-tap access to SOS, trusted contacts who can see their position in real time, and the ability to capture evidence without visibly operating their phone.

Existing tools also fail on reliability: location streams drop, SMS gateways delay and evidence gets lost locally on the device if it's damaged or taken.

03 · My Role

What I worked on

Full stack engineering across the React Native safety app, API backend, map integrations and cloud-based evidence pipelines. I handled the mobile architecture for rapid SOS triggering, silent media capture, live tracking channels, notification infrastructure and the cloud storage integration for secure evidence persistence.

04 · Technologies

Stack and how each piece is used

React Native Cross-platform mobile app for iOS and Android delivering the SOS interface, silent camera, safe routing and contact management UX.

APIs Backend REST endpoints managing user accounts, emergency sessions, trusted contact relationships and evidence metadata.

Maps Map SDK integration for safe route display, live location sharing visualization and current position mapping for emergency contacts.

Notifications Push and alternative notification channels delivering SOS alerts, location share invites and emergency updates to trusted contacts reliably.

Cloud integration Secure cloud storage and sync for captured evidence, SOS session records and live tracking persistence beyond the device.

05 · Architecture & Technical Approach

How the system is structured

HerShield uses a layered REST-native architecture where the mobile app communicates with authenticated backend APIs that own emergency session state, contact relationships and evidence records. Authentication protects all user-specific endpoints, ensuring SOS sessions and location streams are only readable by pre-approved trusted contacts.

Maps are integrated directly into the mobile client for route planning and live share visualization, while the notifications layer handles multi-channel dispatch of SOS alerts and updates. Cloud integration provides secure off-device storage for silent camera captures and session audit trails, synced through signed uploads mediated by the backend.

06 · Key Features

What the product delivers

One-tap SOS emergency triggering with immediate alert dispatch
Live tracking and location sharing with pre-approved trusted contacts
Safe route planning and visualization via integrated maps
Silent camera for discrete evidence capture without visible UI
Reliable multi-channel notifications for emergency alerts
Secure cloud-integrated storage for evidence and session records

07 · Engineering Challenges

Hard problems we had to solve

Realtime live tracking reliability under poor network conditions and device standby modes
Mobile UX for emergency use requiring one-tap SOS, no false-positives and absolutely no taps lost
Silent camera behavior respecting platform privacy constraints while remaining reliably triggerable
Map performance and battery impact when safe routing and continuous tracking run together
Notification delivery guarantees across iOS and Android for SOS alerts that actually arrive

08 · Solutions

How we addressed them

Clean architecture decoupling emergency command flow from UI, with explicit fallbacks and retry logic at every transport layer
Map SDK integration patterns with sensible battery-aware sampling for long-running safe route tracking sessions
Platform-appropriate authentication and permission flows ensuring camera and location access are pre-granted before emergencies arise
Multi-channel notification pipelines with fallback providers and server-side retry queues for alert delivery
Cloud upload patterns with background task support, allowing evidence to sync even when the user can't reopen the app

09 · Outcome

What was delivered

Built and shipped HerShield as a complete women's safety platform with SOS, live tracking, safe routes and silent camera capabilities. The product applies sound mobile architecture, careful permission handling and reliable notification/cloud integrations so that safety-critical actions behave predictably when they matter most.

10 · Lessons Learned

What I'd do differently next time

Safety features must be one-tap by default — any flow that adds a confirmation, a tutorial or an account step before SOS fires is adding risk, not friction.
Location and notification reliability differ wildly by OEM and OS version; real-world device testing catches what emulators and stock devices miss.
Evidence capture and storage need explicit "airplane mode" planning; if the upload can't happen now, the device must persist safely and retry later without user intervention.

Back to all projects Talk about a similar project