Coolight: Enhancing Nighttime Safety for Urban Student Commuters

Coolight: Enhancing Nighttime Safety for Urban Student Commuters

Safety while walking alone at night is a key indicator of a citizen's well-being and a society's inclusiveness. However, this is not equally felt across all demographic groups, especially for university students living in urban areas. We present Coolight, a mobile application designed to reduce stress and anxiety for nighttime walking through an interactive live map, real-time community incident reports, location sharing, and a route planner optimized for user safety. Coolight's design was informed through interviews, questionnaires, and usability tests with university students and their friends and families in Toronto, Canada. This paper describes the concept, research, design approach, and evaluation results of a solution addressing safety concerns urban commuters face at night.

Safety while walking alone at night is a key indicator of a citizen's well-being and a society's inclusiveness. However, this is not equally felt across all demographic groups, especially for university students living in urban areas. We present Coolight, a mobile application designed to reduce stress and anxiety for nighttime walking through an interactive live map, real-time community incident reports, location sharing, and a route planner optimized for user safety. Coolight's design was informed through interviews, questionnaires, and usability tests with university students and their friends and families in Toronto, Canada. This paper describes the concept, research, design approach, and evaluation results of a solution addressing safety concerns urban commuters face at night.

Authors

Mitsuka Kiyohara and Ethan Mondri

Mitsuka Kiyohara and Ethan Mondri

Keywords

Human-centered computing, HCI, Urban mobility

Human-centered computing, HCI, Urban mobility

Created For

CHI SDC

CHI SDC

Year

2025

2025

Originally completed for a class assignment, this project ended up being submitted to the CHI 25 Student Design Competition. It was an intense four-month-long process, starting from problem motivation to user studies to building an interactive prototype. I basically squashed my entire winter break and the beginning of January to create the competition deliverables (which, btw I do NOT recommend lmao). However, this was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever got to try.

I want to say a *huge* thank you to Ethan for being an awesome collaborator and co-author for this project. While we didn't achieve the result we had hoped for, I hope Coolight can inspire more work in the space of urban mobility—it is an understatement how much mobility in urban areas (e.g., accessible roads, safe streets) impacts the quality of life for citizens living in a city.

© Mitsuka Kiyohara 2025

© Mitsuka Kiyohara 2025