At Banjo / SafeXai, I joined as the Founding Designer and built the core product experience for an AI platform focused on public safety. The platform analyzes large-scale location and risk data to detect emerging threats in real time. I designed experiences across multiple channels and hired a team of 10 as the company grew rapidly and raised over $150M in funding.
Founding Designer · Led Product · UI/UX
Hired and led 10 team members
Consumer mobile + B2B SaaS + public safety
Real-time data · Event detection · AI
When you want to stay up to date with what is happening around you, all information is segmented into different networks, making it harder to stay current and understand why something is relevant at a particular moment or location.
In our research, privacy was a primary concern. We established several rules to ensure the data analyzed was publicly shared and prompted by a user network. Users had remote controls to manage their available data.
A finding that reshaped our consent and controls model.
Banjo aggregated location-based data from every relevant social network to provide a macro and micro view of what was happening near you · or anywhere in the world. More than 60 million users helped curate and validate real-life events, from concerts and trends to the latest news broadcast by the people at the exact location.
Beyond mobile, the platform became the destination for relevant location data across multiple channels · including a smartwatch ambiance feature that connected users to relevant contacts near them.
With billions of location-based signals, Banjo was solicited by media channels and private companies. We built a B2B SaaS solution to visualize location-information signals worldwide, used live on one of the most-watched US morning shows.
Banjo evolved into SafeXai: an event-detection engine that searched social media, 911 data, traffic cameras, and other digital information in real time to distinguish accurate events from noise · focused on events that could affect people's lives.
Banjo was the first place I experienced what a decade-long 0→1 arc looks like from the designer seat. Starting as a consumer app, growing into a platform, then pivoting into AI-powered public safety meant rebuilding the design practice several times · hiring a team of 10, defining rituals, and handing off ownership as the product weight shifted.
Our platform was a pioneer in the usage of local signals and AI. More importantly, it was where I learned that the founding designer's longest-lasting contribution is the team that outlives any single launch.