Let your family and friends know you're safe with the press of one button.
This project was done during my time at General Assembly
Teammates: Immaculate Mutebi & Sohee Oh
My role: Lead UX Researcher, UX, IxD & Prototyper
Timeline: 2 weeks
With shootings and terrorist attacks becoming more prominent, people need an efficient way of communicating because these situations often result in confusion, panic, and chaos.
View data source
FEMA is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security that coordinates responses to disasters that overwhelm the resources of local and state authorities.
The functionality of their existing app is limited to setting weather alerts, reading general safety tips, and redirecting users to more information.
To support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate all hazards.
We began by taking a look at what other companies and organizations are doing to address safety issues. Comparing them to what FEMA currently offers helped us identify areas of opportunity.
Other safety apps on the market are doing a significantly better job in regards to aesthetic design, minimizing users’ memory load, and using standards that are already familiar to users.
Take advantage of existing resources to provide relevant information to users at the time of need.
We sent out a screener survey and conducted 9 interviews. Everyone we interviewed had been in an emergency situation or had a family member or friend who was in an emergency situation.
never thought they'd be in or know someone in an emergency situation
friend/family members felt helpless due to a lack of communication and information
turned to the news, twitter, facebook, or google for more information
had trouble getting in touch with a friend/family member
received help from a stranger in the community
have trouble articulating their thoughts or don’t want to retell the story
We explored the emotional journey from the perspective of each persona.
A native mobile app that:
Communicates safety to family/friends quickly and easily
Provides updates directly from FEMA
Connects people so they can share information
Sketching helped us explore the different ways we could incorporate these features.
Starting with hand sketches and a Marvel prototype, I was able to quickly get a sense of where users were getting confused. From there we were able to iterate and create a higher fidelity prototype using Sketch and Flinto.
Were confused how to respond to the question
Weren't sure if the message was sent
Didn’t want to see news articles and preferred updates from FEMA
Didn’t see a relationship between the two sections
Didn't find in-app messaging necessary
