Supporting frontline firefighters in emergency response

Problem space

Firefighters had been relying on analogue tools to facilitate emergency responses, including the attainment of printed documents on leaving the station for en route to the location of the emergency. The contextual information delivered would assist firefighters with determining best courses of action, overlaying vital information to impact decision making. Updates to the emergency would be received over radio as the firefighters travelled to the scene.

The obvious issues with these tools was that they could not be continuously viewed and updated in realtime, and were largely inaccessible. With the noise, stress and constant iteration of response while on the road, updates could be missed. There was no ongoing access to rich information that could be accessed and viewed in transit, and tools weren’t optimised to the high speed, bumpy conditions that firefighters experienced in transit.

The tools used were what firefighters were used to, especially those in higher level positions and that had been with the service for many years, so central to the project was change management and co-design with SMEs.

Approach

To address this challenge, we initiated a comprehensive discovery process, involving contextual inquiries, diary studies, and the formation of a firefighter Subject Matter Expert (SME) panel. These firefighter SMEs played a vital role throughout the project as co-designers and advisors. We began with low-fidelity prototypes, testing them at headquarters, and eventually progressed to a live working prototype installed on fire truck dashboards, which was tested during active emergency responses. Continuous iterations and feedback led to significant improvements across the entire user experience.