TIPEx - Civil Protection
Role: UX Researcher + Interaction Designer
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TIPEx was a national research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity.
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The main goal of this project was to introduce the use of technology for creating emergency plans.
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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
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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.
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Research
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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
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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
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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 ​
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Several user test were finally performed with real users to evaluate the acceptance of technology and its usefulness for the emergency planning process.
