Final Year Project
The fourth year of my degree course focuses on an individual project which should showcase the skills learned over the course of the degree program, and would be demonstrative of the kind of work we hoped to undertake in the future in our careers. Interaction design, user-centred design, interface design and social research were some of the skills I had learned and wished to pursue further in either an academic setting, or in the working world.
As such, my final year project utilised these skills in a real-world domain. I contacted Limerick City Fire Service in the hopes of creating an application to aid their work on a daily basis, and luckily they were more than happy to be my research focus, interview participants and prototype testers. The idea originated from the introduction of the Eircode postal code system in Ireland; a system which cost approximately €38 million to make, but appeared to not have been user tested, as complaints from the beneficiaries of such a system (or, the end users) were a dime a dozen.
My FYP is entitled "A User-Centred Design Approach to Developing a Mobile Application to Support Navigation of Fire Service Workers in Limerick". The goal of this project was to apply a user-centred design approach to formulate a solution (an application) to aid the emergency services in locating specific addresses. Below is a brief description of what the aims of the project were, the methodologies employed to undertake the research, and the outcomes. Finally, there is a link to the final prototype which was created using Axure RP.
Background Research to Date and Project Aims:
Ireland is lagging behind a number of other countries with regard to the integration of location-based technologies in order to make the daily lives of its citizens easier. As a global society we are pushing towards developing “smart cities” (Batty et al. 2012), and location-based technologies are a core element of these (Johansson and Pettersson 2001). Here in Ireland, there are significant issues with navigation and finding locations. For instance, many houses are located in rural areas and are often difficult to find even through the use of GPS technologies. Moreover, there are many areas in Ireland that have the same or even similar addresses. This can be problematic for those working in the emergency services, particularly since the work of these people requires travelling to several locations on a daily basis.
The aim of this project then was to simplify, or indeed find a solution to this issue. There are several unique navigation and location codes available to use across Ireland which can be used to find specific addresses, for example Eircode, Loc8, and Open Postcode. However, there are a number of issues with all of these systems, namely the difficulty of use and clear lack of a user-centred design approach. The objective of this project was to put the end-users at the forefront of the design process and ensure that their needs were satisfied in so far as possible, and to ultimately develop a potential solution in the form of an application which supports the daily work of the emergency services in Limerick.
Methodology:
To conduct this project, I undertook a number of visits to the fire station and carried out interviews with members of the Limerick City Fire Service. I asked open-ended questions that related to, for example, their daily work and how they currently approach issues relating to finding specific addresses. The interviews were semi-structured to allow my interview participants to elaborate on their work and any issues that may arise over the course of the day. A member of the fire service also took me through the equipment they had in their fire trucks which assist with getting updated information about the incident, as well as location information. A key finding from this initial visit to the fire station was that there are two separate but equally important departments to be considered when I was to create the application; the fire crew who attend the incident, and the control centre who take the calls and feed the information to the fire crew.
Following analysis of the interviews with both the fire crew and the workers in the control centre, as well as comprehensively understanding the tools currently used to identify locations of incidents, I began to create low-medium fidelity prototypes. They were sketched on paper, and I used Invision to animate and map the screens. I tested the final low-medium fidelity prototype with the fire service and received feedback which I integrated into the high fidelity prototype. Ideally I would have integrated the changes to another low-medium fidelity prototype, re-tested it, and then created the high fidelity prototype, but as there were time constraints for both myself and the fire service, it was not possible. The high fidelity prototype was created using Axure RP and Adobe Photoshop. Once I had the application completed, I created a video to showcase the application's main functions using Adobe Premier Pro.
Outcomes and Discussion:
My final year project was well received by both the end users - Limerick City Fire Service - and members of the University of Limerick. I won third prize for Action Point's "Most Commercially Viable Project", which was a competition open to the entire department of Computer Science and Information Systems. I think this project clearly demonstrated my ability to understand the needs of the users of any system, and to design with those needs in mind.
I found Axure RP a very flexible program, which allowed me to create and animate the application in the way that I had envisioned, however I do feel that it is a program that needs to be used with a specific purpose in mind. The forums and community are excellent help, with sample files often provided to demonstrate how something had been achieved. There is also an Axure Share service which can host your application, and allows you to share your work with others. This is where you can find my final prototype.
The fourth year of my degree course focuses on an individual project which should showcase the skills learned over the course of the degree program, and would be demonstrative of the kind of work we hoped to undertake in the future in our careers. Interaction design, user-centred design, interface design and social research were some of the skills I had learned and wished to pursue further in either an academic setting, or in the working world.
As such, my final year project utilised these skills in a real-world domain. I contacted Limerick City Fire Service in the hopes of creating an application to aid their work on a daily basis, and luckily they were more than happy to be my research focus, interview participants and prototype testers. The idea originated from the introduction of the Eircode postal code system in Ireland; a system which cost approximately €38 million to make, but appeared to not have been user tested, as complaints from the beneficiaries of such a system (or, the end users) were a dime a dozen.
My FYP is entitled "A User-Centred Design Approach to Developing a Mobile Application to Support Navigation of Fire Service Workers in Limerick". The goal of this project was to apply a user-centred design approach to formulate a solution (an application) to aid the emergency services in locating specific addresses. Below is a brief description of what the aims of the project were, the methodologies employed to undertake the research, and the outcomes. Finally, there is a link to the final prototype which was created using Axure RP.
Background Research to Date and Project Aims:
Ireland is lagging behind a number of other countries with regard to the integration of location-based technologies in order to make the daily lives of its citizens easier. As a global society we are pushing towards developing “smart cities” (Batty et al. 2012), and location-based technologies are a core element of these (Johansson and Pettersson 2001). Here in Ireland, there are significant issues with navigation and finding locations. For instance, many houses are located in rural areas and are often difficult to find even through the use of GPS technologies. Moreover, there are many areas in Ireland that have the same or even similar addresses. This can be problematic for those working in the emergency services, particularly since the work of these people requires travelling to several locations on a daily basis.
The aim of this project then was to simplify, or indeed find a solution to this issue. There are several unique navigation and location codes available to use across Ireland which can be used to find specific addresses, for example Eircode, Loc8, and Open Postcode. However, there are a number of issues with all of these systems, namely the difficulty of use and clear lack of a user-centred design approach. The objective of this project was to put the end-users at the forefront of the design process and ensure that their needs were satisfied in so far as possible, and to ultimately develop a potential solution in the form of an application which supports the daily work of the emergency services in Limerick.
Methodology:
To conduct this project, I undertook a number of visits to the fire station and carried out interviews with members of the Limerick City Fire Service. I asked open-ended questions that related to, for example, their daily work and how they currently approach issues relating to finding specific addresses. The interviews were semi-structured to allow my interview participants to elaborate on their work and any issues that may arise over the course of the day. A member of the fire service also took me through the equipment they had in their fire trucks which assist with getting updated information about the incident, as well as location information. A key finding from this initial visit to the fire station was that there are two separate but equally important departments to be considered when I was to create the application; the fire crew who attend the incident, and the control centre who take the calls and feed the information to the fire crew.
Following analysis of the interviews with both the fire crew and the workers in the control centre, as well as comprehensively understanding the tools currently used to identify locations of incidents, I began to create low-medium fidelity prototypes. They were sketched on paper, and I used Invision to animate and map the screens. I tested the final low-medium fidelity prototype with the fire service and received feedback which I integrated into the high fidelity prototype. Ideally I would have integrated the changes to another low-medium fidelity prototype, re-tested it, and then created the high fidelity prototype, but as there were time constraints for both myself and the fire service, it was not possible. The high fidelity prototype was created using Axure RP and Adobe Photoshop. Once I had the application completed, I created a video to showcase the application's main functions using Adobe Premier Pro.
Outcomes and Discussion:
My final year project was well received by both the end users - Limerick City Fire Service - and members of the University of Limerick. I won third prize for Action Point's "Most Commercially Viable Project", which was a competition open to the entire department of Computer Science and Information Systems. I think this project clearly demonstrated my ability to understand the needs of the users of any system, and to design with those needs in mind.
I found Axure RP a very flexible program, which allowed me to create and animate the application in the way that I had envisioned, however I do feel that it is a program that needs to be used with a specific purpose in mind. The forums and community are excellent help, with sample files often provided to demonstrate how something had been achieved. There is also an Axure Share service which can host your application, and allows you to share your work with others. This is where you can find my final prototype.