[quote]By Drew Danko
Photos courtesy of Medha Rajashankar[/quote]

What is the app you created?

It’s called “SafeMe” and it’s a safety app. You can preset up to five contacts and if you are in a dangerous situation, it sends a text alert to those contacts. There is three ways you set it off to send the message. There’s a timer, so if it takes you 10 minutes to get home you can set a timer and when you get home you press “safe” and it turns it off, but if you don’t press safe, it sends an alert with your GPS location to those contacts. You can also press “save me” and it will send the alert. The third is panic mode, and if you know you’re in a dangerous area, you can turn it on and press your volume down button three times to send your GPS location.

Why did you decide to make this?

I always feel unsafe walking at night, so I thought it would be helpful.

How did you make this app?

I did an internship at Google this summer, so my friend Natalie, who I met there, and I decided to make it. My friend and I worked on the wire-framing of the app, which is basically telling it what button leads to what screen. Once you have that, you start working on the coding of the app.

What other types of things did you do at your internship?

I was doing stuff with security, like making sure data gets deleted when someone deletes their account or an app.

Is this something you want to do in the future?

Yes, I want to be a computer scientist.

You can learn more and download the beta version of “SafeMe” from the Google app store for Android here.