eclipse users were in the dark about 911 psap performance.

65 emergency/911 call centers were unclear about the Eclipse dashboard's purpose and functionalities.
Opportunities

How can design elevate the current experience to better satisfy usability standards, increase adoption rate, and strengthen satisfaction scores?

With existing PSAP utilization, how can changes be gradually applied and communicated over releases?
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Outcomes
  • Follow-up interviews with the PSAP representatives were promising with great eagerness.
  • “YES would love this” -PD Director
  • Discussions with development implementation were in-progress for assignment with development.
  • Due to unexpected resource reduction, formal metrics were not collected.
Team
  • Product Manager: Christian Gratton
  • Design Researcher: Becca Shuman
  • Lead Designer: Missy Yarbrough
Project Duration
  • May 2021—July 2021
Primary Skills Utilized
  • wireframes + sketching
  • design system + visual design
  • user research support
  • information architecture
  • qualitative interviews
Identifying the Eclipse Challenges

To kick off the project, I met with the product team to learn that Eclipse was intended to enable public safety stakeholders to make informed decisions for staffing, resourcing, budgeting, funding, and performance based on provisioned data and analytics. To become oriented with Eclipse, I developed a list of qualitative questions to better understand Eclipse's existing users and their sentiments of product usage. Additionally, I conducted an audit to evaluate each page's clarity regarding its respective task of purpose.

The following is the summary of challenges that were uncovered:
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Unclear Purpose 😶🌫️

What problem is the Eclipse dashboard trying to solve for PSAP Directors / Managers / Supervisors / Operators?

Usability Standards 🖱️

How can design elevate the existing experience to better satisfy usability standards so that 911 centers can better understand the product's value?

Incremental Change🗺️

With existing PSAP utilization, how can changes be gradually applied and communicated over releases?

Development Limitations ⛓️💥

Due to the way Eclipse was built, we were restricted to Microsoft PowerBI, the base of how the charts were produced.
FYI: Archetypes of Eclipse Users
  • Shift supervisor (local jurisdiction, single PSAP)
    PSAP director (but also looking @ same information). Motivations: Where are we performing well/poorly?
  • Regional agency (CAL OES, NCT)
    Where are we not doing good? Why are PSAP’s average call time longer than the other(s)?
  • Larger agencies (FEMAs)
    FEMA likely won’t care about average nationwide call. Looking at spikes, drops (exponential changes - 200%). Prioritizes maps + layers + responsive actions

Core User: PSAP Manager

As a PSAP manager, I need to be able to assess the health and performance of my PSAPs quickly so that I can...

  • - Compare relationships between data points from different PSAPs that I am interested in monitoring
  • - Show the locations of my interested PSAPs on the map so I can quickly ascertain if a PSAP is doing well
  • - Have quick access to filtered information that I want to regularly revisit and share updated information

So much information...what's PSAP management to do?

Let's find out what's the most essential date through a card sorting exercise.
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What were the results?

Working with our team's researcher, we conducted 6 interviews with 7 PSAP managers and supervisors from various regions.

The most important data were:

  • - Wait time on each call
  • - # of Available Call Takers
  • - Calls Awaiting Dispatch

Now that I was better informed, how did redesigning go?

After numerous explorations, what was the user sentiment?

“YES would love this” -PD Director

Planning for Long Term Changes
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Due to the development constraints, the product team worked together to map out a feasible plan for implementation of the design proposals that covered MVP requirements vs. long-term systemic changes.

Reflections

What did I learn?

Having ease of access to digestible data helps PSAP stakeholders define their funding justification, better prepare for real-time shifts of 911 patterns, and allocate resourcing more effectively.

What would I change?

I would have liked to apply the use of natural language and AI prompting to generate reports based on specific needs for the PSAP management roles.

View more case studies:
Incident GridsEclipse Visual UpdatesIBM Cloud Docs SearchIBM Cloud Support Center RedesignIBM Cloud Docs Imagery Guidance

LET'S BEND FUTURES TOGETHER--FOR THE BETTER. ;)

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