the CAReABLE, a wearable device for elementary students and staff, makes it more efficient for students, teachers, and faculty to notify and communicate with the rest of the school during an emergency.
HUman Centered Design and engineering M.S. at the university of washington
Problem
Overwhelming research data suggests that the majority of teachers and faculty are concerned with the existing inefficient communication system in schools today. Although teachers felt confident in their ability to respond in a school emergency, they did not feel as confident in the ability of their students to react appropriately. Additionally, there was concern about communication bottlenecks within the school system.
ROle
I served as the research lead on a team of 4 tasked with designing and testing a device that would improve school safety.
Process
Research
Ideation/sketching
Prototyping
Testing
Iteration
research
secondary research, User interviews, Survey, Draw the Experience, Focus Group
I conducted an online literature review focusing on existing research in emergency preparedness across the United States, and looked into studies conducted on children’s behavior in an emergency. I facilitated five semi-structured interviews with our stakeholders, including two teachers, one librarian, and two administrative safety supervisors. My team and I created a survey that was sent to elementary faculty and staff. The survey included 21 questions and covered demographics, experience in elementary schools, emergency training, existing emergency protocols, confidence in both the respondents and their students in reacting to emergencies, and communication in emergencies. My team and I conducted a drawing exercise with a class of fourth graders where the students were asked to draw something that might make them feel safe in a classroom. We facilitated a focus group with this same group of students in order to gather information about how students think and act during emergencies.
From this research my team determined communication to be a major pain point and source of concern surrounding emergency situations in elementary school settings. Communication of the alert, as well as communication with one another during an emergency, were concerns. This led to a redefined design question focusing on communication.
From this research data my team and I curated a list of design requirements to use during the ideation and sketching phases. These requirements included: intuitive, approachable, easy, reliable, and purposeful.
ideation/sketching
We knew that the artifact should facilitate quick communication to the office and other classrooms, as our data suggested that initial communication during time of emergency is a bottleneck in current emergency response procedures. We also knew that the artifact should allow for something as simple as just an initial warning, since in the moment, teachers need to perform other steps to protect their students, and may not have time to do much more than raise the alarm. We kept these, among others, like being able to communicate basic status and being accessible to all, in mind as we created a series of sketches embracing those requirements.
The team reviewed the sketches and critiqued them by discussing the strengths, weaknesses, feasibility, and originality, as well as how well the idea worked for each of our pre-defined personas. We tallied the frequency of common patterns we saw across our sketches as well as the sketches from the draw the experience exercise, like “button”, “two-way communication”, “wearable”, and the set of dominant colors that were used.
We realized that having an improved communication system in the classroom was only solving part of the design question and that there were very real concerns about students who may be outside of the classroom or where a teacher is not present. We created a new design based on this user research and our refined sketches that we felt would address our design question holistically. This led us to focus our design around a wearable device with a version for students and adults.
prototyping
Our design decision to focus on a wearable was due to its versatility and the ability to account for each individual student. This also gave students agency and the ability to self-report and communicate, which we and teachers felt were important to optimize communication across the school.
Using colored card stock, glue, and markers, the team created low-fidelity paper prototypes of our student and adult wearables. When crafting both devices, we took into account the design principles we established as well as the variance between our different primary personas.
Testing
To test the prototypes, my team and I conducted task-based scenario testing and a facilitated brainstorming session.
Scenario testing
We performed scenario testing with seven fourth grade students that aligned closely with the two opposing student personas we had created. The tasks were consistent for all participants. The first task was initiating an alarm and the prompt was:
“Imagine there is a stranger in your classroom, and you are the first one to see them and you think they are dangerous. You remember you have your emergency watch and know this is a good time to use it. Show me how you would use the watch to let an adult know.”
The second task was communication during an emergency communicating and the prompt was:
“Imagine you are in a lockdown and you are alone in the hallway. You want to use your watch to talk to someone in the office or a teacher. Show me how you would do that.”
The third task was marking yourself as safe and the prompt was:
“Imagine you have been taken somewhere safe by an adult that you know during this lockdown. Show me how you might use this watch to let adults know you are safe.”
We also performed scenario testing with a teacher using the adult version of the watch. Tasks were very similar to the student tasks, but included calling the office for non-emergent communication as well. The first prompt was:
“Imagine there is an intruder in your classroom, and you are the first one to see it. Show me how you would use the watch to initiate an alarm.”
The second prompt was:
“Imagine you are in a lockdown and you have not heard from anyone on the outside. You want to use your watch to talk to someone in the office or another teacher. Show me how you would do that.”
The third prompt was:
“Imagine there is a maintenance issue and you need to get in touch with the office. Show me how would use your watch to call the office?” The fourth prompt was “Imagine you have made it to safety during a lockdown. Show me how you might use this watch to mark yourself as safe.”
Facilitated brainstorming
My team and I conducted a facilitated brainstorming session with two district level safety and risk management officers. We brought our original prototype to get initial feedback and questioned them about the potential design flaws we would need to solve for. We had some outstanding questions about the logistics of our system that we were able to ask as well.
iteration
The quantitative and qualitative data from these usability testing sessions was evaluated and analyzed in order to determine requirements and specs for version 2.
Due to concerns about students using the mark-as-safe button during an emergency when not actually safe, we implemented a proximity RFID mark-as-safe alternative and removed the button. This meant that an adult device would need to be placed next to a student’s device for them to be marked as safe and this reduces the risk of error.
We overhauled the design for adults to focus on function more than anything else. We optimized the buttons on the device to remove unnecessary buttons (such as fire which uses a sensor system today) and adjusted sizes to place emphasis on daily communication needs (such as calling the office).
The rebranded V2 version for both students and adults were modified to include a haptics feedback push-to-talk button that activates only during an emergency. This further reduces “fidget factor” and intentional/accidental misuse of the design.
We also added a digital clock, alternative faces, and a screen. We found that having a screen was very important to our users and to the safety supervisors as it could could relay messages from the office, display notifications from emergency responders, and show GPS locations for different student devices - all very important in various emergency and post-event scenarios.
We found there was a need for a central dashboard that could be accessed by all stakeholders, including teachers, office staff, district supervisors and emergency personnel. This crucial communication device could be used to monitor the status of all students and teachers. Instead of creating a standalone dashboard to add to the repertoire of school monitoring systems, we decided a companion web and mobile app that integrates into the existing systems is much better at serving the needs of our stakeholders.
constraints
limited time
As this was school project, we moved through the entire process quickly. The team was not always able to go as in-depth as we would have liked.
limited resources
Again, as a school project we were limited by both money, and location. All of the testing was done locally, in the Seattle area. The prototypes were low-fidelity as there was no budget for these.
lack of business considerations
This school project did not take into account the business stakeholders. Therefore, my team did not consider the cost of the product or implementation. That is a factor in industry that was not replicated for this project.