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MOBILE APP DESIGN 2021
Kris UI/UX, Academic Solo Project

Project1

Details

Tools

Pen and Paper

Adobe XD

Time Frame

4 weeks

Methods

Brainwriting 6-3-5

Digital Prototyping

Paper Prototyping

PACT

User Research

Summary

“Kris” (aka crisis) is an app concept that helps people in crisis situations like fires or car accidents by preventing by-stander syndrome through team effort.

Task

Task Description

The task was to carry out a design project at an early stage focusing on prototype development. In a user-centered design process a digital artifact that helps save time during rescue operations was to be created.

Time Frame

4 Weeks

The Problem

I decided to focus on crisis situations related to incidents where there would most likely be witnesses.

Bystander Effect

Through doing research and reading up on how bystanders act when they’ve watched an incident happen, I came across the term “Bystander Effect”. This is a psychological phenomenon where someone believes that any one of the other people who also witnessed an incident will do or have done something already. This can result in, for example, that no one calls the authorities because they believe someone else already has.

The Solution

Concept

The main question I wanted to answer with my concept was “How can an app counteract the bystander effect?”. My target audience was people who have little to no experience in emergencies. After brainstorming concepts using the method “Brainwriting 6-3-5” I came up with an app that uses crowd-sourcing to collect information about emergency situations. Through letting users who have watched an incident happen register as a witness and answer a few questions about it, they help emergency services know what’s going on before they arrive at the scene. The way this counteracts the bystander effect is through making sure someone has called emergency services as well as letting people who aren’t sure about how to help do so. The idea is that the more data from eye witnesses the authorities have, the better and more accurate it will be.

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Sketch of Kris #1

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Sketch of Kris #2

User Research

Design activity

To test my concept, I involved a user who was asked to act as if he had just come across an accident. The point of this was to find how a user would react to an accident; what’s his flow of action? He was asked a series of questions of what he would do in that situation.

Most important points from what I gathered:

  • His first instinct wasn’t to call emergency services but to make sure everyone is ok.
  • He wouldn’t walk up to the incident if other people were already there.
  • He imagined he would feel anxious and that it would be hard to know how to help.

Iteration

My initial sketches did not include an option in the app to call emergency services which I then added. This would ensure that someone calls. I also decided to simplify my design since it would be a high-stress situation and the simpler the design, the easier it would be to understand without any experience with the app, which is crucial since most people don’t encounter accidents on a daily basis.

PACT-analysis

People:

The app is directed perhaps mainly to people without experience of emergencies. It is especially suitable for people who easily get stressed or suffer from anxiety in critical situations. It can be used by all ages but problems can arise for the blind because some functions require that you have seen a situation happen. The app will be available in Swedish and English but only for people who use bank-id (Swedish identification service).

Activities:

The activity is not expected to happen often because an ordinary person does not run into emergencies on a daily basis. The application must be simple enough to understand that no previous experience is required to be able to use it; you need to be able to understand how it works immediately. The activity is designed to use information from multiple people who individually state what they have seen, also called crowd-sourcing.

Contexts:

The activity can take place anywhere where something that requires an ambulance or fire truck has taken place. It can happen around the clock in both quiet and loud environments. The social context can affect how stressed the person who is going to perform the activity is, which in turn can affect the level of precision that can be accomplished. Something that could hinder or delay the activity is a lack of phone coverage.

Technologies:

To be able to use the artifact, you need a mobile phone with access to the internet. You also need to have created an account using bank ID to prevent misuse of the application. The main output given is the position of an incident after someone who saw it called emergency services. The most important input that takes place is the information you provide as a witness to the incident.

Paper Prototypes

I made paper prototypes to answer certain important questions about the design before creating a digital prototype.

Questions the paper prototypes answered:

How can you make the app more inclusive? Have more than one language.

How can you prevent abuse of the app? Register with ID.

How can the bystander effect be counteracted in the simplest way? By clearly showing when someone called 112.

How can witnesses and spectators be involved in the rescue operation? Ask them to provide the information they know so that the appropriate people have as good an overview of the accident as possible even before they arrive at the scene.

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Paper Prototype #1

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Paper Prototype #2

Hi-Fi Prototype

Design

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Hi-Fi Prototype #1

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Hi-Fi Prototype #2

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Hi-Fi Prototype #3

Important points for the design

  • Simple design to avoid it being busy for an already overstimulated brain.
  • Clear, foolproof instructions that ensured users success in completing the form.
  • Using ID to sign up so if the app is misused and you can no longer be trusted to help, you can be reliably banned.
  • Calming, inoffensive colors.

Final Thoughts

During the process I realized just how crucial context can be for design. Since my concept is designed for high-stress situations not experienced very often it needed to be very simple. Initially, I wanted to include different categories for the type of accident and more questions to help further inform EMT’s but too complicated of an app would ultimately turn some people away and defeat the purpose of crowd-sourcing.