RedLine is a wearable bracelet + parental app duo that protects children from the red line: the boundaries that shouldn't be crossed.

Project Overview

RedLine is a child wearable paired with a parental mobile app. Designed with children's joy and autonomy in mind, the wearable is a discreet bracelet that detects only concerning interactions— such as verbal threats, sexual abuse, or bullying. With app integration, which empowers parents through real-time alerts, RedLine detects potentially dangerous situations for children and redefines child safety in the digital future, prioritizing safety without compromising trust.

RedLine began as part of Carnegie Mellon’s UXA XHacks 2024 hackathon, a weekend-long design competition, where the theme was to design for the children of tomorrow. Then, I individually expanded the concept through further research and development over the next week.

My Contributions

On a team of 3, I primarily acted as a user researcher, creative director, and product designer. Through ideation to delivery, I explored the problem space, defined design values, and brainstormed ways that child wearables could be a detection and prevention solution for child sexual abuse (CSA) and other external safety threats. Ultimately, I framed our solution through industrial illustration and visual identity for the wearable, brand, and pitch.
‍
Our project was named a top 3 finalist out of 15 student teams and received the Best Presentation award at Carnegie Mellon’s UXHackathon.

I. Overview

RedLine is a 2-piece solution detecting scenarios such as child abuse, bullying, and immediate threats while addressing a range of other child dangers.

1) Discrete Child Bracelet

Designing for children of the future means applying future potential to the present. In the future, we envision devices that can be smaller but more powerful, and the RedLine bracelet uses that advantage. Functioning as a "wearable Siri" with a privacy-first approach, the pendant's speech recognition is only alerted when there are words or phrases deemed sensitive by our algorithm, and tracks concerning interactions when the child is involved.

2) Safety App for Guardians

The app connects the parent or guardian to their child wearing the bracelet. From this integration, the RedLine app is able to analyzes audio cues from the pendant and alert the parent of any signs of distress their child may face. These alerts provide information on the nature of the perceived threat so that parents can take appropriate action. Offering detailed insights and identifying patterns, parents can review past incidents and proactively address recurring concerns.

View our hi-fi prototype here.

II. PROBLEM

Every 9 minutes, a child faces sexual abuse in the United States. However, current prevention methods are insufficient.

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a deeply under-addressed issue, affecting millions of children globally. When our team examined the existing research available on CSA in the United States and United Kingdom, we found that:

89%

of child abuse cases go undetected.

Office of the Children’s Commissioner, Protecting children from harm (2015)

93%

of CSA victims know their perpetrator.

Finkelhor & Shattuck, Crimes Against Children Research Center (2012)

95%

of cases are preventable with awareness.

Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute, NCBI (2022‑23)

Despite these high statistics, few if any tools exist that take a proactive role in the detection and prevention of CSA.

Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Stop Sexual Violence (2016)

To elaborate, current CSA systems focus mainly on informing policy, and not on real-time prevention or intervention. At the same time, parents and guardians often discover abuse far too late to intervene.

‍We believe it’s time for a shift. When investigating, I found that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's STOP SV (2016) framework identifies data collection and surveillance as 1 of 6 key strategies for combating sexual violence. With new advances in AI and natural language processing, we saw an opportunity to create a tool that goes beyond passive data and instead proactively surface early warning signs, before harm occurs to children.

Personal Connection

Why does this matter to me?

This project was born from wondering how to "design for the children of tomorrow"— the theme of the UX hackathon— with a sense of responsibility surrounding technology. When I had heard about the Larry Nassar case involving decades of sexual abuse in 2016, it hit close to home, as I had spent part of my childhood as a gymnast myself. Though I wasn’t directly affected, the survivors' testimonies and his sentencing resurfaced questions I had about trust, silence, and protection in environments that are meant to be safe. It reminded me how many stories go untold, and how often children aren’t equipped with the language, tools, or support to speak up. I wanted to explore how design and technological wearables could begin to shift that reality.

III. Research

In the current market, existing child wearables focus on surveillance and screen exposure, but none value child autonomy, much less sexual assault prevention.

Through initial research, we quickly found out that bracelets— over necklaces, rings, clips, and other forms of wearables— were the most practical and secure for children. Kids are less likely to lose or break them, which is why the market for functional children's jewelry is dominated by bracelets and watches.

We focused on analyzing 20 different child wearables and found many similar traits among them.

5 Standout Wearables

Trends/caveats in the child wearable landscape

Bulky design, thick straps

Not suitable for all ages or wrists
Can be clunky and disrupts daily activity
Not easily concealable

Smartwatch screens

Substitute for mobile phones
Overload of apps and functions
Promotes early consumption of technology, which can lead to unhealthy use later

GPS / Location tracking

Promotes child monitoring and control (‘helicopter parenting’) over autonomy
May hamper kids’ freedom and independence, or cause parent-child conflict

Health / fitness tracking

While important, children are generally the most healthy demographic
Some trackers count calories and promote weight loss, which often may not suit kids’ goals or needs

We concluded that the wearables industry is saturated with devices that aim to do everything at once, packing too many features into one wearable. However, while most child wearables emphasize bulk, screens, tracking, or fitness gamification, wearables for adults take a different approach.

Therefore, I also examined some innovators in the wearables market for fitness-oriented adults, especially looking at current distraction-free wearables that promote wellness, productivity, and recovery without constant notifications.

Wearables for Adults

Current distraction-free wearables, like the Oura ring, Whoop band, or Evie ring, prioritize screenless, passive interaction.

Unmet Needs

Yet it's children, not adults, who are the most susceptible to technological harm because of their developing brains. Children are even more in need of non-disruptive tools.

Design Gap

Despite the breadth of options for kids, there is a lack of distraction-free technology that promote children's safety, development, and agency.

My research revealed a clear difference in intent: adult wearables support internal wellness, while child wearables focus too often on parental convenience and external control rather than what a kid might actually want to wear. Given that parents are the spending population who would be buying a wearable, this made sense, but we wanted to create a product that parents would find useful, without compromising designing for children.

With this in mind, we made a distinction between our user and our customer desires. Parents want to buy items that keep their kids safe and healthy (in all ways, including but not limited to sexual assault), while kids want to wear items that are expressive, stylish, and comfortable.

IV. Service Direction

Our design principles prioritize child independence, joy, and safety while avoiding pitfalls parents worry about, like overstimulation or social isolation.

What problems will the children of the future face?

Children now and in the future face a shifting technological landscape that gives rise to several other problems. Based on my research, I identified 5 rising problems. Unlike our understanding of the current market, we wanted to design so as to not exacerbate these 5 issues.

How do we design to mitigate these issues for children?

I considered various values to make the wearable acceptable and friendly to children, as well as avoid the harmful trends and issues we identified. These values informed our features, forms, and materials when designing.

Then, I ranked user scenarios by evaluating the severity of events based on triggers, impact on those affected, and potential outcomes, ensuring that RedLine addresses critical situations effectively and promptly.

At its core, RedLine prioritizes parent-child relationships and fosters a collaborative approach to child safety. By potentially engaging various societal levels (parents, communities, institutions), we create a joint effort among different levels of society to ensure environments where children can thrive.

ServIce Blueprint

use cases & evolving toolset

Although we began our focus on detecting and preventing child sexual violence, the nature of an immediate-action, evolving app made it viable to tackle other situations involving a child's wellbeing. In my service blueprint, I included those detection, notification, and prevention measures for various events children might encounter that threaten their safety. These additional use cases were reflected in our app.

V. Design

We looked toward non-intrusive, culturally-inspired designs which integrate protection into a child's life seamlessly.

Designing the wearable with children’s joy and autonomy in mind, we looked towards the mythical side of Chinese culture, specifically the tradition of red knots or threads. These red string bracelets are a symbol of strength and protection against harm, signify good luck and health, and are often gifted to children. I drew inspiration from this concept to create a light and non-intrusive product that visually acts as a lucky fashion accessory for the child rather than a tool for surveillance.

Concept & Moodboard

Symbolic + Practical Design

When designing the look, I wanted to keep the look and feel of a traditional red knot bracelet, for both its symbolic strength and its literal strength, as knots are used in virtually all rope systems and known for their holding power. Unlike some flimsier string bracelets, I opted for a thicker knot pattern for more security and to make it extra difficult to lose or break.
‍

Mechanical Construction

I also studied various ways to fit hardware in a spherical shape. I looked into open-source projects like magic 8-balls and even a Star Wars BB-8 Robot, visually exploring how to make the sensors fit into our pendant with minimal outside interference.
‍

24/7 wearability

Taking into consideration materials and physicality, I designed RedLine for 24/7 use under most conditions. My proposals include waterproof microfilaments for the string band, titanium sensors, and aluminum for the main pendant, for its durability and hypoallergenic properties.
‍

VI. Prototyping & Features

The bracelet technology and app prototype utilize artificial intelligence to detect danger without constant monitoring, favoring user privacy and preference.

Lastly, we studied how multi-modal artificial intelligence could use different inputs to improve our users' lives, especially through natural language processing (NLP) and other related AI technologies. I brainstormed a suite of sensors:

Motion Sensors

An accelerometer and gyroscope detects sudden movements indicative of physical harm, falls, or potential abduction.

Discreet Microphones

Captures audio for LLM processing of interactions related to possible verbal or physical abuse.

Temperature Sensors

Monitor the child's exposure to extreme heat or cold as well as water submersion, confirming environmental activity.

Heart Rate + Oxygen Sensor

Identifies potential health issues like fainting or signs of extreme stress.

Specifically, I looked at detection and motion sensors on current-day fitness and health wearables. There are already many custom algorithms that detect types of motion on the body, which can be modified to detect dangerous scenarios and safety hazards. Since we were designing for children in the future, we considered how future improvements in technology would allow devices to become smaller, more powerful, and more fluent.

Example: Walking steadiness on Apple Health

On an iPhone 8 or later with iOS 15, users can view walking steadiness to gain insight into their risk of falling. Apple does this by using algorithms to assess a person's balance, stability, and coordination through built-in motion sensors on phones. Metric like walking speed, step length, and walking asymmetry are used to determine their walking steadiness and classification.

When we presented our design solution to the UXA judges committee, a reoccurring question we received was how we considered family and child privacy. We pinpointed several approaches beforehand of how to take a security-first approach that allowed for discretion and safety.

End-to-End Encryption

Implementing end-to-end encryption to protect data and to manage the wearable device and the connected app.

Selective Speech Recognition

Utilizing speech recognition that only detects specific interactions involving the child wearing the bracelet, and only begins recording if sensitive content is detected by a trained algorithm. In other words, a "wearable Siri" that only triggers when called to.

Data Processing

Processing data before sending to ensure we only get conversations that surpass the pre-determined danger level according to a pre-trained LLM.

IV. User FLow 1

For first and second-level incidents, parents receive detailed, actionable alerts in real-time on concerning interactions involving their child.

Emergency 1

3 separate interactions concerning Sammy, Tom's kid, were detected during her gym class.

IV. User FLow 2

For immediate or urgent emergencies (third-level incidents), RedLine enables live monitoring features and lets parents send automatic alerts to authorities.

Emergency 2

Sammy is potentially being kidnapped, which constitutes a Level 3 incident.

For urgent situations like in this case, RedLine sends a real-time alert to the parent.

Reflections

🥇 First time UX Hacker

My first design hackathon! It was a rewarding experience to build something from the ground up, and I'm glad I got to participate in a hackathon before graduation, and even be one of the winning ideas. I learned how to deal with uncertainty, since we produced a solution for an open-ended prompt that did not have the constraints of class grading or cut-and-dry specs.

⌛ Task prioritization

Because of the time-constrained nature of a hackathon, our "iron triangle" of scope, time, and cost was crucial. I managed my time between processes: researching, brainstorming, designing, prototyping, writing, and presenting. I also learned what was pivotal in pitching an idea and what parts to flesh out in detail after the event. If this was a longer endeavor, I would have liked to do more qualitative interviews to pinpoint user needs instead of relying on quantitative patterns and intuition.

🧒 Designing for children & a better future

Striking a balance between designing for children and appealing to parents was difficult, and we initially struggled to manage these interests. Our purpose became clearer after I mapped out design values, which made me realize the important of having a solid foundation.

Ultimately, our biggest accomplishment was tackling such an important topic. Although prevention measures are difficult to put into practice, RedLine acts as a starting point in helping detect CSA. In an ideal world, child exploitation should never happen, but we hope our idea can open up channels for parent-child communication around wellbeing.

RedLine