Designing with Emotion: What Safety App, ASAP, Teaches Us About Innovation
At 3:30 a.m. on a quiet August night, 17-year-old Lisa left her friends in Amsterdam’s Leidseplein and began the short journey home to Abcoude. She never made it. Police later found her body along Holterbergweg — a stretch of road already known for poor lighting and visibility.
Lisa’s death shook the Netherlands. Buildings across Amsterdam lit up orange in her memory. Protesters hung out banners reading ‘Ik eis de nacht op’ — ‘Reclaim the Night’. For many women, it was a painfully familiar conversation — about fear, safety, and the second nature precautions: keys between fingers, sharing live locations, and choosing routes home not because they’re faster, but because they’re brighter.
Fear as a Design Problem
When 22-year-old UU student, Yeline Hoogmans, first came to Playground she wasn’t thinking about business models or product-market fit. She was thinking about how she could help solve the problem of fear — the quiet, tense space between feeling unsafe and being safe again. A feeling so many women carry with them on a date, on public transport, or walking home at night.
I don’t go running at night — isn’t that silly? I should be able to go whenever I want, but I always have to think of safety. Bring a baggy sweater to hide my form, act ‘offputtingly’ to avoid catcalls. Many women share these experiences, and seeing how safety compromises affect women made me want to do something about it.
That “something” became ASAP— a simple app that lets users instantly alert a trusted circle when they feel unsafe.
With one tap, friends and family receive a live location and a prompt to call or check-in — offering users reassurance, not panic.
Today, most people depend on patchwork solutions — WhatsApp messages, live locations, calls that go unanswered. They work, but they’re not designed for those heightened emotional states when thinking clearly is hardest. Yeline saw a design problem hiding in plain sight: how could technology respond as quickly as emotion itself? ASAP turns that messy process into a streamlined, intuitive system.
I once walked home alone for forty minutes, calling people for thirty before reaching anyone. People aren’t always on their phones, but it’s usually within reach- 5 meters, I read. What if multiple friends got an alert knowing that I felt unsafe, breaking through ‘Do Not Disturb’? The wait could shrink from thirty minutes to three seconds.
Unlike traditional safety apps that contact authorities, ASAP starts with connection. The design choice is subtle but powerful. It reflects how people naturally cope with fear — by reaching for someone they trust. Yeline’s idea sits alongside current solutions and is rooted in empathy. It shows that in moments of fear, connection matters just as much as procedure.
From Emotion to Action
Yeline’s insights about fear didn’t stay abstract. She wanted to do something tangible — to turn empathy and understanding into a solution that could help women feel safer — though she never pictured entrepreneurship as the way to do it.
I’ve always been entrepreneurial — leading projects, persevering to go after what I want — but I had no formal entrepreneurship education. I didn’t think I could tackle sexual violence with a product. I always assumed policy-making was the way to make change. But laws take time. Playground’s coaching and mentorship program offered a roadmap and showed me I could make an impact faster through design — and I got all of this for free!
With the help of Playground, Yeline turned emotion into action — interviewing women, testing ideas, and refining prototypes. Her research was striking: 89% of women felt unsafe on the streets, 77% on public transport, and 42% on dates. Most didn’t call the police — they called a friend.
There’s a gap between fear and real danger. Apps that alert volunteers or police are great, but the threshold’s high for most people. You don’t know the responders, and for them, showing up can feel risky. Calling 112 [the police] feels like overreacting when nothing has happened yet. But sitting with fear alone isn’t right either. We needed something for that in-between moment.
ASAP fills that gap. Check-ins, live location sharing, and instant call-back features give users emotional support, helping them step away from tense situations naturally.
Talking to someone you know makes it easier to share what’s happening — or even just pick up a call to walk away from a stranger catcalling you on the train. ASAP stands out because it works with how women already respond to fear. It’s sad we’ve had to internalise these reactions, but it’s an immediate plan that meets women where they are, until deeper change happens.
At Utrecht’s Wellbeing Week, Yeline presented ASAP to potential users. Many were enthusiastic and signed up for the app’s launch, offering valuable feedback along the way. Privacy and discretion emerged as key concerns, prompting her to refine the app. From this process, she made a clear promise:
ASAP will stay free. No data for commercial use — only aggregated insights shared with the government to help fix infrastructure issues, like poor lighting or lack of safety measures. Cities can then make real changes — better lighting, more CCTV surveillance, more patrols — creating safer spaces not just for women, but for everyone.
Yeline’s approach shows how empathy-driven research guides design, turning emotional insights into concrete solutions.
The Science Behind Emotional Design
Donald Norman, a pioneer in design, calls it emotional design: creating products that not only work but make people feel understood, safe, and empowered. It’s why good design helps people act decisively in stressful moments.
Most safety apps are reactive to escalated situations: Epowar alerts authorities when you’re in danger, WalkSafe maps crime hotspots. They respond after fear escalates. ASAP flips the script.
Safety apps look fairly identical — geolocation map on the homepage, a bunch of options on the menu bar. I wanted a simple design for quick responses: an SOS button on your lock screen to reach someone instantly. One tap alerts friends with your location and what you need — check-in, call me, etc. It works before a situation escalates, giving women support instantly. Most apps have too much design, clouding women’s ability to react quickly.
The value is clear: design that anticipates emotion transforms safety from a reactive procedure into an actionable, empowering experience.
A Collective Responsibility
Since Lisa’s death, twelve more women in the Netherlands have been killed in acts of femicide. Every eight days, a woman's life is lost; every day, countless women face abuse, harassment, or threats to their physical and emotional safety. These aren’t just numbers — they are stories of fear, resilience, and injustice that ripple through communities. They remind us that safety isn’t just a personal matter; it’s a collective responsibility. How our streets are lit, how public spaces are designed, and how we look out for one another all shape how safe we feel. Inspired by this, Yeline hopes to expand ASAP’s mission through education:
My minor in gender studies opened my eyes to how deeply inequality runs — from superficial things, like women’s 10-step haircare routines versus men’s simple 4-in-1 products, to bigger issues, like personal safety. I want to start a community that discusses and raises awareness for gender equality. I don’t believe men are inherently violent, but breaking down gender norms can help shift perspectives and behavior. Imagine film nights, open discussions, workshops in schools. We can change how we see safety and each other.
A Word on Entrepreneurship
Designing with emotion isn’t just a process; it’s part of the entrepreneurial mindset. Yeline’s journey shows that innovation doesn’t always start with a market gap — sometimes it starts with a feeling you can’t shake. The underbelly feeling that something isn’t right. The curiosity to understand it. The courage to turn it into action, even when you don’t have all the pieces.
Starting from scratch isn’t easy. I have the knowledge and the vision, but I don’t have all the technical skills, and I need the right people to help bring ASAP to life. I’m working with an IT pensionado who’s passionate about helping, but we still need extra hands, the network to scale, and someone to help you believe in your dream when it feels impossible. That’s where Playground made all the difference. The support, mentorship, and connections — especially from [my coach] Wiepke — helped me refine my idea and keep going, even when I considered stopping. Months later, seeing ASAP featured in the news, still feels surreal. It’s bittersweet: it shouldn’t take tragedy for people to notice these ideas, but I’m grateful help is finally here.
Yeline’s journey shows that coursework reaches its full potential when applied. Collaborating with experts while building ASAP enriched her learning, teaching her not just the material, but how to combine knowledge, skills, and teamwork in practice. As she puts it:
I almost call it an extra study, but like DIY. It’s a fun challenge with a steep learning curve, helping me turn broad interests like gender equality into focused challenges I can tackle, like women’s safety. Entrepreneurship is scary but exciting. Many students want to make a change and have good ideas, but feel stuck thinking they have no power. One thing that helped me — like a few other startups here — was integrating my thesis and course assignments into my startup work. That way, you’re not doing 200% extra work; you’re using your academic projects to build knowledge and momentum for your idea. You can take classroom insights and grow them into something that can make real change.