911 was designed in the 1960s for landline telephones. The status of 911 infrastructure varies between jurisdictions, but in many cases, local infrastructure has been largely unchanged for sixty years.
Without specialized infrastructure, cellphone-based 911 calls do not accurately transmit location data to the 911 call center, or allow for text-based communications.
Meanwhile, as of 2015, the majority of people in the US are cell-phone only. Landline ownership has experienced a sharp decline coinciding with the meteoric rise of cell phone adoption.
To start investigating possible solutions, I developed some probing questions using the tried-and-true "How might we?" format.
How might we?
I have personally never dialed 911 for an emergency, so I relied on user research to fill in gaps in my knowledge and pave over any preexisting assumptions I may have harbored. This was a difficult topic to find suitable interview subjects for, since most people do not call 911 very often. I managed to speak to a couple of individuals who had dialed 911 personally - fewer than I would have liked, but as many as was possible given my time constraints. With a bit of effort, I was also able to speak to a dispatch supervisor who worked at a call center. I came away from these conversations with a few key takeaways:
Taking these insights, I created a persona in order to put a face to some of the issues and pain points that I hoped to address with this product.
Domestic violence victims may not be able to place a normal 911 call without their abuser hearing.
Other emergency situations may require discreetness, such as campus shootings, armed robberies, or kidnappings.
Some jurisdictions are unveiling text-to-911 services for users who can’t dial standard 911 safely, but coverage is still limited to certain counties.
After brainstorming a range of potential features for this application, I determined an MVP (minimum viable product) by targeting those features that were most critical and easy to implement.
In conducting a competitive analysis, I aimed to compare possible features against both traditional 911 and against the updated text-to-911 programs that were being unveiled at the time.
Interestingly, after I conducted my initial competitive analysis but before I put together my final presentation, two major tech companies unveiled their own expanded emergency services capabilities. Apple unveiled its iOS 11 update, adding the emergency SOS feature to the iPhone. Around the same time, Uber unveiled its emergency button for on-ride emergencies. While these were not part of my initial comparison, I added them to the competitive analysis for my final presentation as additional points of comparison. Naturally, I took the fact that major companies were tackling the same issue as a sign that I was on a productive path of inquiry.
While the flow for this app with its limited features seemed very straightforward at first, I quickly discovered that it was anything but. I went through several revisions, trying to make things as simple as possible to the end user and leveraging existing design patterns from phone calls and texts wherever possible. As is often the case, simplicity on the user side of things required some complicated logic on the backend.
Early on I had the notion to employ an Uber-style map as a means for the user to easily indicate their location to the dispatcher. I wanted an infrastructure-agnostic means of determining the user's location. A map that shows your location, with the ability to drag and modify as needed seemed ideal. However, how this map was implemented went through several revisions.
Although I ditched the "discreet mode" nomenclature relatively early in the process, I was intent on creating a means for users to interact with dispatchers silently. This also went through a number of iterations until it reached its final form as a step-by-step wizard.
As this was a student project, it never received a final deployment, per say. However, a prototype was built in Invision that gives a decent impression of the intended final experience.
I also created a detailed final presentation for the project, outlining much of the above in PowerPoint.
This was a learning experience by design, and I learned quite a bit during the process. My time at General Assembly cleared a lot of misconceptions I had about user experience design at the outset, and gave me some clear guide rails for the UX process moving forward.
The coolest thing I got to do during this project was interview a 911 dispatcher. It seemed like such a lofty ambition, so actually pulling it off was exhilarating. I promised a 20 minute interview and easily breezed past 30 before reluctantly letting her go.
I conducted a number of user tests throughout the process with various levels of refinement, but there was one idea I wanted to try but never had the chance. Since the app is meant to be done under emergency circumstances, testing a calm user in a controlled setting may not be sufficient. Testing the app with a user after intense exercise (elevating their heart rate) or after performing a stressful task may be a closer approximation to the actual usage of the app.
This was a simple prototype built with a simple tool (Invision). Were I undertaking this project today, a tool like Figma would give the opportunity to provide more polish and realistic microinteractions, better approximating the final user experience.
