TIPEx - Civil Protection
Role: UX Researcher + Interaction Designer
TIPEx was a national research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity.
The main goal of this project was to introduce the use of technology for creating emergency plans.
Tasks included in this project: conceptualise, research, benchmark, user interviews, direct observation, user diaries, data analysis, requirements, co-creation, information architecture definition, prototyping, users testing.
Project description
Problem
An emergency-planning process can last a year. Nowadays, emergency planners define plans using paper and pencils, what make them to lose a lot of relevant planning information. The goal of TIPEx project was to introduce information technologies in the emergency-planning process to overcome this information loss problem.
Research
The first step was studying emergency planners in the field. Seeing in first hand how emergency planners work in their day-to-day helps to identify the main needs of the users. Several emergency planners were interviewed, I attended to their planning meetings, and follow their work for two years.
Analysis
Data analysis (coding, task analysis, affinity diagrams,..) allowed to identify their technological needs and start with the prototyping process. I built prototypes with different levels of detail and tested them with emergency planners before starting the development phase.
Prototyping and Design
A collaborative software tool to be deployed into a large touch screen was developed as a solution to the information loss problem.The tool was designed to cover their main planning tasks, support different roles and storing a lot of planning information..
User testing
Several user test were finally performed with real users to evaluate the acceptance of technology and its usefulness for the emergency planning process.
