UNICEF NOVA
AR road safety glasses for children
Project Type
Professional
Timeline
Feb 2025 – Aug 2025
Worked with
2 Designers
Innovation Specialist
Contributions
Research
Prototyping
Testing
CONTEXT
Exploring child-centered mobility design for a sustainable future
This milestone project was developed in collaboration between CCA and the UNICEF Innovation Node. We worked closely with Meg McLaughlin, Innovation Specialist at the Node, receiving feedback throughout the process to guide and refine our direction.
The UNICEF Innovation Node is a specialized hub within UNICEF that focuses on early-stage ideas and prototypes, partnering with designers and technologists to explore scalable solutions. Through this partnership, we investigated how human-centered design can create safer, more inclusive mobility systems for children over the next 3 to 10 years.
Impact
Through research, prototyping, and collaboration with UNICEF Innovation Node, the project demonstrated how AR navigation can foster safe and independent mobility for children.
20+
Parents and children participated in usability tests, shaping the product’s safety and interaction design.
3–10 yrs
Future mobility scenarios explored to identify long-term opportunities for child accessibility and confidence-building.
50+
UNICEF partners, faculty, and peers engaged through live demos and case presentations, contributing insights to an upcoming UNICEF knowledge product.
PROBLEM
Balancing independence and safety in child mobility
Children want the freedom to move through cities on their own, but face risks such as traffic hazards, unfamiliar routes, and limited situational awareness. Parents, meanwhile, want to encourage independence but struggle with fear and the need for reassurance. Existing navigation and tracking tools are either not designed for children or feel intrusive, leaving a gap for solutions that can both empower children and comfort parents.
SOLUTION
AR guidance for children, safety controls for parents
We designed Nova, an AR glasses system paired with a mobile companion app, to make children’s independent mobility safer and more confidence-building.
For children
The AR glasses provide simple HUD text, responsive navigation guidelines, and a friendly mascot that guides them safely while encouraging awareness.
For parents
The companion app lets parents set up child profiles, safe zones, and emergency contacts. It sends real-time alerts if a boundary is crossed, providing reassurance without constant surveillance.
RESEARCH
Scope of the challenge
To better understand the context of independent child mobility, we reviewed global data on road safety and parental concerns:
Global burden
Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children ages 5–19, with nearly 220,000 lives lost every year — over 600 each day. These incidents disproportionately affect children in low- and middle-income countries where road safety infrastructure is limited.
Preventable injuries
More than 1,600 children and adolescents die daily from preventable injuries, and traffic crashes remain the single largest contributor. Many of these deaths are linked to unsafe walking conditions, poor visibility, and lack of protective infrastructure near schools and residential areas.
Parental concerns
In the U.S., one in five parents have never allowed their teen to travel alone, even for short trips. Parents cite traffic dangers, unfamiliar routes, and potential abductions, underscoring the tension between fostering independence and ensuring safety.
RESEARCH
Grounding the design in real experiences
To design a child-centered navigation system, we immersed ourselves in both expert discussions and everyday family experiences. We attended Riding for Change: Labor & Transit Equity and Robotaxis and AI: Navigating Mobility Innovation and the Public Good at UC Berkeley, and we joined the San Francisco Summer Resource Fair to connect directly with parents and children. Alongside these engagements, we conducted parent interviews and facilitated co-creation workshops.
From this process, we uncovered three key insights:
Parents seek reassurance while children strive for independence, creating an ongoing tension in mobility decisions.
System-level changes such as policy updates or infrastructure upgrades are slow and uncertain, which pushes families to look for immediate, practical solutions they can adopt in daily life.
Rapid advances in technology are opening new possibilities for tools that could reshape child mobility by balancing safety, independence, and engagement.
RESEARCH
Evaluating potential solutions
Building on these insights, we compared potential approaches such as GPS trackers, mobile apps, transit training, and community escorts. While each offered partial solutions, none fully balanced safety with independence.
This led us to focus on Navigation AR Glasses. Although not yet feasible for production, advances in AR, language models, and hardware are reducing costs and expanding accessibility. AR glasses represent a forward-looking vision for how technology could better unite safety and independence while opening new opportunities for child mobility.
RESEARCH
Competitive analysis
Once we aligned on AR glasses as a promising direction, we conducted a competitive analysis of Meta, Snap, and Apple to better understand the hardware landscape, interaction methods, and long-term trends. This helped us define a focused product roadmap grounded in current feasibility and future opportunity.
This exploration surfaced three insights that guided our next steps:
AR glasses are becoming the next computing platform
They offer a strong opportunity to integrate advanced technologies. This momentum is growing, with significant industry investment and early consumer adoption.
Interactions are still maturing
Voice and hand gesture input are currently the primary interaction methods. Portable AR glasses with reliable display overlays are still limited and may take two to three years to reach mainstream use.
Focus on software, not hardware
UNICEF does not need to create its own AR glasses. Prioritizing a flexible software experience allows us to stay aligned with industry development while remaining device-agnostic.
IDEATION
Design opportunity
How might we design AR glasses that help children navigate public spaces safely, support their independence while reassuring parents, and remain simple and engaging for everyday use?
DESIGN
Success metrics
To guide the development of the Navigation AR Glasses, we defined clear metrics that balance children’s independence with parental reassurance. These focus on building confidence, ensuring safety, and encouraging exploration while keeping both children and parents at ease.
Child navigation confidence
Children feel more capable and secure when navigating public spaces independently.
Parental reassurance
Parents gain peace of mind knowing their child is supported and monitored within safe boundaries.
Safety incident reduction
Fewer risks and accidents occur as children are better guided and more aware of their surroundings.
Independence encouragement
Children develop autonomy by exploring safely without constant parental oversight.
DESIGN CHALLENGE 1
Presenting information clearly without overwhelming the user
I researched different types of AR text displays and evaluated their suitability for this project. Based on that study, I chose HUD text as the primary approach because it keeps essential details like distance, estimated time, and alerts in fixed positions, making them stable and always visible without blocking the main view.
“I want my child to get directions, but not so much text that they lose focus on the road.”
Based on early feedback and real-world usage conditions, I defined four key overlay principles to ensure safe, accessible navigation for children:
Readable: Large, high-contrast, and legible across changing lighting conditions.
Focused: Brief, context-aware, and free of unnecessary clutter.
Unobtrusive: Positioned to avoid blocking key parts of the user's field of view.
Adaptive: Flexible in size and placement to accommodate diverse user needs.
We applied these principles by combining HUD text with responsive elements that adapt to user movement. HUD elements such as alerts, time, and distance remain fixed and always visible. Responsive path indicators adjust in real time to guide navigation without breaking immersion.
DESIGN CHALLENGE 2
Balancing safety with independence
At first, we focused mainly on the child’s view, designing AR glasses to guide kids with navigation cues and hazard alerts. But testing showed this wasn’t enough—parents still felt anxious. They wanted alerts, SOS triggers, and reassurance beyond what the child saw, so we expanded the system to include a parent-facing layer of notifications and controls.
“I need to know if my child goes beyond where it’s safe, so I can step in when needed.”
This shift transformed the concept from a child-only tool into a paired system where parents and children onboard together. Children receive simple, encouraging guidance through the glasses, building confidence to navigate more independently, while parents manage safe zones, alerts, and emergency options in the companion app, giving them the reassurance they need.
USABILITY TESTING
Iterative feedback to refine the experience
Over a one-month prototype sprint, we tested with 20 parents, sometimes together with their children. Their feedback on navigation clarity, safety features, and usability guided key refinements to the AR glasses and companion app, making the system more practical, child-friendly, and reassuring for parents.
Major problems solved from usability feedback
Simplified navigation cues by clarifying text, icons, and language.
Strengthened safety with alerts, SOS functions, and danger warnings.
Improved the companion app with easier onboarding, safe zone setup, and parent–child contact options.
Reduced visual clutter so children could focus on key guidance.
Refined hardware concept toward thinner, more child-friendly glasses.
Iteration example 1: Simplifying AR dialogue design for clarity and focus
Iteration example 2: Enhancing safety setup with clarity and visual depth
FINAL DELIVERABLES
Companion app onboarding
Through the companion app, parents connect the AR glasses, create a child profile, add emergency contacts, and define safe zones such as home or school. Once setup is complete, they can monitor their child’s location in real time and receive instant alerts if the child leaves a designated safe area, ensuring independent yet secure navigation.
AR glasses onboarding
The AR glasses onboarding introduces kids to using Nova through simple, voice-based interactions. Guided prompts teach them how to start navigation with a wake phrase, clearly state destinations, and follow Nova’s real-time directions. Kids also learn they can call for help at any time, ensuring both independence and safety during their journeys.
Navigation mode
Navigation mode for the AR glasses guides kids step by step to school using voice commands and clear visual cues. Children can start their trip with simple prompts, choose their destination, and follow safe, turn-by-turn directions enhanced with contextual alerts like construction zones or traffic lights. Along the way, progress updates and friendly characters keep the journey engaging, and kids are celebrated when they safely arrive at school.
Freedom mode
In Freedom Mode, the AR glasses give kids more independence while still ensuring safety, offering gentle reminders and alerts as they explore. The system warns when leaving a safe area, discourages unsafe interactions, and guides them to safe places when needed. With step-by-step navigation and positive reinforcement, children gain confidence moving around on their own while parents remain reassured.
Roadmap
This timeline charts the project’s evolution from early pilots to large-scale adoption, outlining key steps in building the core system, testing with schools, and refining real-world interactions. It shows how a prototype grows into a service that helps children navigate their environments safely, confidently, and independently.
REFLECTION
This project revealed how speculative design and real-world insights can complement each other. Engaging with parents and children deepened our understanding of balancing safety, independence, and reassurance, while prototyping showed the potential of AR navigation as an educational tool rather than just technology.
Working with UNICEF Innovation Node highlighted that child mobility is a global equity issue, not only a family one. Our current system uses voice control for intuitive interaction, and future directions may explore hand gestures for more natural engagement. As AR, AI, and hardware evolve, this concept could grow into an educational mobility service that builds confidence and independence in children worldwide.
"The projects you all created were incredibly thoughtful. The effort you put into conducting interviews, doing the research, and designing solutions was such a joy to witness. We learned so much from the process!"
— Meg McLaughlin, Innovation Specialist, UNICEF Innovation Node
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