Development of a Notification - Alert Ecosystem for Protection Against Harassment in Sports

This master's thesis presents the development of HALT4Kids, a digital notification and alert ecosystem aimed at protecting children from harassment in sports. The system includes three main components: a child-facing mobile application for discreet emergency alerts, a parent-facing app for real-time notifications with geolocation, and an administrative dashboard for incident monitoring and analysis. Designed with emphasis on usability, security, and real-time responsiveness, the system was built using modern technologies such as Laravel, socket servers, and token-based access control. Two evaluations were conducted: a heuristic evaluation based on Nielsen’s 10 usability principles, which identified minor issues that were addressed, and a System Usability Scale (SUS) test with 28 participants, yielding a score of 65.18, indicating acceptable usability. The results confirm that HALT4Kids is a practical and scalable solution for enhancing child safety in sports environments and can be adapted for schools or other youth-focused settings. The project was presented at the international STE 2025 conference, underlining its contribution to digital child protection. Future work includes multilingual support, real-world pilot deployments, integration with emergency services, and AI-based analytics to detect patterns of harassment. HALT4Kids exemplifies how technology can meaningfully empower and protect children in vulnerable situations.