Operation Safe Escape

Our Partner

Operation Safe Escape supports survivors of domestic violence, stalking, and harassment to escape abuse and regain control over their lives. They provide critical security and safety resources, including digital and physical safety planning, device/account protection, and Open Source Intelligence assessments, to ensure survivors’ ongoing safety and security.

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Problem

Operation Safe Escape currently manages survivor intake and case handling through email-based communication and spreadsheet tracking. This manual process is time-intensive, prone to human error, difficult to scale, and results in fragmented case histories with limited visibility for administrators and volunteers. Additionally, the lack of a centralized, structured system makes it challenging to maintain secure, auditable records, despite the critical need for a reliable paper trail to support survivor safety and potential law enforcement involvement.

Solution

We worked with Operation Safe Escape to build a secure, streamlined case management platform that centralizes survivor intake, communication, and case tracking. The system replaces email- and spreadsheet-based workflows with structured data collection, consolidated case histories, and auditable records, enabling OSE to proactively manage cases, improve operational efficiency, and safely scale support for survivors. In-app chat functionality allows administrators and volunteers to communicate directly within the platform, and all interactions are logged and structured to provide a clear, auditable record suitable for legal and law enforcement purposes.

Design

Operation Safe Escape serves two main user groups: administrators and volunteers, and survivors.

Administrators and volunteers primarily use case management and form builder screens, which are optimized desktop-first to support detailed workflows and efficient oversight. A dynamic form builder enables non-technical Safe Escape team members to update form content and questions without developer intervention. Designing for this group required balancing large amounts of complex data with usability, ensuring that case details, survivor histories, and form responses could be displayed clearly without overwhelming the user.

Survivors, on the other hand, need to submit information quickly and discreetly, so their experience is designed mobile-first with a simple, intuitive interface that minimizes friction while maintaining privacy and security. Key design challenges included enabling fast form completion, minimizing cognitive load, and ensuring that sensitive information could be submitted safely under stressful or urgent circumstances.

Tech Stack

Our web app is a full-stack platform supporting survivor intake, case management, and secure communication. The proof of concept provided by Safe Escape uses Django, which we carried forward into our app for a smooth handoff, with PostgreSQL handling structured data storage. The front-end is built with React and TypeScript, authentication and role-based access are managed via Auth0, and Supabase supports real-time data and secure storage.