Choosing the Right People

From many candidate communities to one deliberate choice

Following the toolkit naming conventions, this file is named exp-02-converge-worksheet-2025-02-20

Context

This document demonstrates how the Halo Alert team moved from divergent exploration of possible communities to a converged choice of focus. It follows the Convergence Guide and illustrates each step with real decisions, reflections, and evidence from the team’s early work.

1. Compare: Spot Patterns and Weigh Possibilities

Candidate groups under review (from Diverge stage):

  • College women walking home at night
  • Professional women commuting on foot in mid-sized cities
  • Female university students crossing campus after dark
  • Shift workers returning home before sunrise
  • Immigrant women using late-night buses
  • Elderly women commuting by public transit
  • Women in rural areas walking to jobs without cars

Patterns noticed:

  • Recurring theme of vigilance: across nearly all groups, women adapted routines for safety (texting friends, carrying keys, rerouting).
  • Time-of-day effect: concerns intensified at night or in dark/isolated areas.
  • Transit + walking overlap: many groups blended public transit with walking — friction arose especially in “last mile” segments.
  • Uneven visibility in mainstream solutions: tech apps and products largely targeted “generic commuters” or “college safety,” not nuanced subgroups.
Tip

Team reflection: Professional women commuters and female students showed layered patterns: safety behaviors woven into daily life, often invisible to outsiders. These weren’t dramatic events, but steady frictions.

2. Empathize: Notice the Emotional Pull

Groups that lingered after work sessions:

  • Professional women commuters — stories of texting roommates, rerouting streets, balancing career pressure with constant background vigilance.
  • College students — raw vulnerability late at night, but often constrained by campus access rules (harder to study without IRB).

What stuck emotionally:
The team couldn’t shake the quiet burden of professional women who “looked fine” yet carried routines of self-protection every day. Unlike campus students, these women rarely voiced complaints — they had normalized fear.

Note

Signal of empathy: Team members reported “feeling protective” and a sense of injustice — why should these capable professionals still have to carry keys between their fingers?

3. Assess Access: Can You Actually Reach Them?

Quick tests conducted:

  • Draft LinkedIn messages to small networks of women in New York and Boston.
  • Pilot outreach in coworking Slack group: short invite for 15–20 min conversations.
  • Intercept attempts outside subway exits near campus.

Results:

  • LinkedIn: 3 out of 5 messages received thoughtful replies within 48 hours.
  • Slack group: 8 women volunteered stories or referrals.
  • Subway intercept: 2 agreed to short chats, though one declined recording.

Assessment:

4. Select Your People

Decision:
Halo Alert chose to focus on professional women commuting on foot in mid-sized cities.

Rationale:

  • Clear patterns of persistent, subtle safety burdens.
  • Emotional resonance: the team felt drawn to their lived experience.
  • Proven access: multiple channels worked quickly and respectfully.

Note: This was treated as a working commitment, not a final lock-in. The team acknowledged definitions would evolve as pain points clarified.

Attachments (Data Room Pointers)

  • Comparison board (Miro capture) — clusters of candidate groups & overlap patterns.
  • Empathy notes — debrief docs where team recorded “lingering voices.”
  • Access tracker sheet — outreach attempts, response rates, notes on tone of replies.
  • Draft outreach messages — short LinkedIn / Slack scripts.

Researcher Reflection

  • Surprises: Volume and thoughtfulness of replies from professional women via Slack — faster and deeper than expected.
  • Updated assumptions: Safety concerns aren’t always voiced; they’re embedded in daily rituals.
  • Next step: Launch ethnographic exploration (conversations, observations) with this group to surface unmet needs.

Attribution: Convergence documented by the Halo Alert team, 2025-02-20.