Circle Map Improvement

Inspiration

Many real-world safety situations don’t immediately require triggering an SOS, but still need to be communicated. For example, feeling uncomfortable in a location, noticing suspicious behavior, or needing help getting home safely.

Current safety apps focus heavily on emergency alerts, but there is a gap for lightweight, interactty communication. I was inspired to build a feature that allows users to share safety-related context before situations escalate into emergencies.

What it does

Circle Safety Update is a map-based feature that allows users to:

• Share location-based safety updates with their circle
• Attach photos and notes to provide real-world context
• View updates directly on a map
• See recent updates in a feed
• Tap any update to navigate to that location using Apple Maps

This creates a communication layer between passive check-ins and full SOS alerts, making safety interactions faster and more practical.

How we built it

This project was built using:

• SwiftUI for UI and state management
• MapKit for map rendering and navigation
• CoreLocation for handling coordinates
• PhotosUI (PhotosPicker) for image upload
• Xcode + iOS Simulator for development and testing

Challenges we ran into

• Deciding how to display visual content on the map without cluttering the UI
• Updating the location to different view
• Ensuring the UI follows Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Successfully built a fully functional SwiftUI feature within the hackathon timeframe
• Integrated map, image upload, and navigation into a single flow
• Implemented a clean and intuitive user experience consistent with iOS design patterns

What we learned

• How to integrate MapKit with SwiftUI effectively
• The importance of designing for real-world use cases, not just UI
• Better understanding of how the security app related to people

What's next for Circle Map Improvement

If given more time, the next steps would be:

• Add real-time backend support (e.g., Supabase, Firebase) for multi-user synchronization
• Implement push notifications when new updates are shared over the map
• Improve map interaction (e.g., tapping annotations to view full details)

Built With

• swiftui