How Kitestring Promoted a Personal Safety App for Women (Without Turning Pink)

Aiming technology campaigns at women is a risky endeavor: the product must offer something appealing or useful to women, and then must be situated so as to evoke a positive response in the largest group possible. Trouble is, women make up half the population and share few overarching experiences on which such messaging can be based. Many campaigns fall back on stereotypes to appeal to a large number of individuals, but in doing so they often end up insulting many of their target audience. How, then, can a story be crafted for women that does not isolate as many as it woos? There is not a single answer to this query, but there are some helpful case studies that navigated this minefield effectively, including Kitestring.

Kitestring is a pretty neat web-based personal safety service, which acts a lot like an app (but technically isn’t one). When headed out alone, you program Kitestring with a completion time. At that point Kitestring texts you, and if you don’t respond, it sends a customized text message to your pre-selected list of loved ones. It is certainly not the only personal safety system directed at women, some of which even have governmental endorsements, but Kitestring took a different – and arguably more effective ­– approach to reaching women.

One of the key differences between Kitestring and its competition is that it relies on inaction from the user, instead of action. Unlike other personal safety apps, Kitestring does not imply that it can intervene during dangerous situations with 911 or whistle features that require user action. This design difference subtly addresses a fear shared by many women: if overpowered or incapacitated, no amount of 911 apps requiring action can help. Instead of suggesting that the app could prevent violence, Kitestring suggested that it would prevent your absence from going unnoticed. Focusing on this difference effectively responds to a shared concern, without having to emphasize the root fear at all.

In a recent interview with Elle, Kitestring’s founder, Stephan Boyer, explained: “the idea for Kitestring came to me in late January… My girlfriend, who lives in a dangerous neighborhood in San Francisco, called to ask me to check up on her as she was walking home from work one day. I wondered if there might be an app or service that could offer a little extra safety for her when she goes out at night.” This story was well suited for the venue (as evidenced by the fact that this was the second article covering Kitestring for the outlet, which doesn’t have a large tech focus, in the space of a week), but this story is not the common thread in the larger body of coverage. In fact, most coverage positions Kitestring not as a protective partner, but as a virtual mom. The shift away from the real, romantic story toward the universal-bordering-on-generic one is smart: the maternal comparison is even palatable to gender watchdogs, who might have otherwise pointed out that over-protectiveness and constant check-ins may be symptomatic of an abusive relationship.

Some of the articles featured an interesting point – a caveat of sorts – that highlights how Kitestring might also appeal to men. Until this moment in many such pieces, the intentionality of targeting women is only implied through photos of women alone in urban settings, and the cultural assumption that this is probably a product for the fairer sex. It makes perfect sense that the same service would be useful for men walking home alone, the elderly, or hikers, but despite an equally compelling purpose for these populations, they only make it into a select few articles. It is this very broadening that I found to be the most compelling message of all towards the service’s credibility for women. Personal safety is a human issue and a women’s issue, and the tone of the Kitestring messaging succinctly and subtly allows for both.