Page 78 - Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities - A U4SSC deliverable

Using this information, it was possible to create four “personas”, i.e., fictional characters who
summarized the types of women met during the research.

These ranged from “the anxious newcomer”, a migrant worker who found every part of the city
intimidating, to “the female warrior” a more confident and streetwise woman used to travelling at
night.

Figure 21: Example personas produced during user research� Picture credit: Pulse Lab Jakarta

While each persona used different strategies to travel safely such as wearing plain clothes and face
masks to avoid attention, a number of insights emerged from the research. For example:

• women felt that bus stops were intimidating, dark and hard to access; this meant they would
prefer to wait in shops or at busy intersections;

• street vendors and minibus (angkot) drivers were seen as a reassuring presence rather than a
nuisance;

• none of the women was prepared to report incidents of sexual harassment, due to feeling
ashamed or afraid that they would lose their jobs.

The next step was to involve the people who could change things – government officials, transport
operators, urban planners and community groups. This was done in a series of co-design workshops
in which the results of the study could be shared and solutions proposed.

64 Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities | May 2023