In order to understand the public safety domain, in the first phase of this project conducted field research with our PSO collaborators, following principles of applied ethnographic research. Thus, in the requirement analysis phase were used to understand PSOs processes and practices, through the close observation and documentation of the culture at each of the PSO partners in this project.
Goal
To fully understand the PSOs (Fire, EMS and Law Enforcement) processes with an aim at establishing the gaps and opportunities for which novel user interfaces that rely on next generation technology can be designed.
Download Full Requirement Analysis Report Presentation
Information Gathering
The initial meetings done with the project partners in order to present the project, establish the partnership, define goals and assign of a "core group" of first responders:
First meeting with PSO Chiefs:
Second meeting with first responders "core group":
The 1-1 interviews performed with the "core group" of first responders. The interviews were semi-structured and the questions were based on the "Voices of First Responders" report by Choong et al. (2018) .
- Demographic questionnaire
- Interview questions
- Consent form
- IRB protocol approved
Law Enforcement
Search for suspicious subjects inside a house
Firefighters
Search and Rescue training in a burning building
EMS
Gunshot wound trauma and burn care
The main purpose of the ride-alongs were to:
- Capture first responders’ procedures and environmental conditions
- Observe the equipment and devices used
- Identify the difficulties with the use of current technology
We have performed two ride-alongs with the Hillsborough Police Dept. focused on traffic stops and traffic enforcement.
Design and Prototyping of User-Interfaces
In this phase, we analyzed the interviews data collected through text analysis tools
- Tabulate and analyse the demographic data about the first responders
- Speech-to-text transcripts of the interview recordings using IBM Watson platform
- Text analysis tools to identify terms frequency and build a word cloud
The source codes and the results of the analysis can be found here .
Based on the data analysis, the research team had a couple brainstorms in order to:
- Identify a scenario to simulate for each PSO
- Choose a first responder key role in the scenario
- Sketch the possible next-generation UI to support the identified task
The scenarios, tasks, roles and next-generation UI envisioned were summarized into posters presented during the demo session of the 2019 Public Safety Broadband Stakeholder Meeting .
Based on the scenarios, tasks and roles picked from the brainstorms, we listed the possible technologies, interactions and information that could be integrated into our UIs design.
Together with the presentation of the designs for each PSO, we had a group discussion with the first responders to discuss the scenarios and collect feedback on the UI designs.
The discussions were used to refine the UI prototypes, both in adapting the scenarios to better reflect the real situations, refine the interacations and interfaces with higher fidelity images and 3D renderings and add elements missing in the first prototype. The process was documented and presented to each PSO and can be accesed in the links below: