City of Boston Office of Emergency Management
Simplifying emergency shelter setup by designing an emergency kit and accompanying instructions
Summary
In the case of a mass evacuation, the City of Boston has designated some Boston Center for Youth & Families (BCYF) facilities and schools as places to seek shelter.
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Our client expectation was that we would build a kit with emergency supplies to prepare the facility to be a shelter during an emergency. The kit (and instructions on how to use it) will supplement the shelter handbook that is already in place at each facility.
Discovery
We began by conducting interviews with people who were representative of users of the proposed emergency kit. We started with members of the Office of Emergency Services (OEM) and continued with employees from the American Red Cross, who staff the shelters, and one employee from BCYF.
We used empathy maps to synthesize the insights we collected in our interviews, and created two user personas from there. Both of our personas were people who had little to no training on how to actually set up the shelter in the case of an emergency.
We also created a user journey map for the whole process of running a shelter, though we were concentrating mainly on opening and organizing the shelter at the second and third stages of the process.
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The main aspect of this project was to determine what actually goes inside the emergency kit.
Once we defined the size of the kit, we got down to figuring out what should be included. This was decided based on what our potential users said in interviews, as well as guidelines from FEMA and the American Red Cross.
After we decided on the contents of the kit, we conducted a card sorting activity to figure out how we should sort the items in the kit into categories. This was done through Optimal Workshop, and gave us several helpful graphs and visuals about what categories should be.
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We ultimately decided on three categories.
The first was Forms and Documentation. This would be two binders: one with a copy of the Shelter Handbook, and one with the necessary forms and other documents for running the shelter, like Intake Forms.
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For the second category, we simply went with Supplies. This includes a variety of useful items like flashlights, radios, office equipment, tape for marking the floors, high visibility vests, and a First Aid kit.
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The final category was Signage, which would include all the signs necessary to set up the shelter inside and outside the facility.
The most important item in the kit is a one-page laminated sheet that includes a simplified version of the setup instructions as well as an inventory of everything that should be found in the kit itself. This page includes a URL and QR code to a web page with a longer written-out version of the same instructions.
The First Aid kit was an interesting point because originally the client wanted the emergency kit to be something that could be set aside for a decade. First Aid kits, however, need to be updated on a yearly basis.
When we proposed this to the client, it was decided that a yearly check to update the First Aid kit would also ensure that the facility staff knew where the kit was and that it was stocked. We later decided to add a sign-off sheet to the kit inventory for these annual checks.
After that, we moved on to designing the digital guide to accompany the kit. We wrote the longer version and then designed what it would look like based on the brand guidelines provided by the City of Boston team.
We conducted twelve total usability tests. The majority of the tests were done on mobile, as we expect most users will be on mobile during an emergency.
We got an average usability rating of 8.8/10, with users saying that the layout was clean and easy to follow, but that some of the wording was confusing. Users also wished that the links to other pages and documents were included in-line rather than only off to the side or at the bottom.
Iteration
We made some changes to the prototypes, adding in-line links and changing the line arrows on the inventory page to checkboxes so that users could mark items off as they check the inventory.
We also were able to change some of the more confusing wording to simplify things and make the instructions easier to follow.
Next Steps
User testing will need to be done with the physical kit once one has been assembled. This was not possible for us to do as this project was conducted remotely. We also would like to see usability testing done on the physical one-sheet guide that goes in the kit.
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Client
City of Boston Office of Emergency Services
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Length
Three-week sprint
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My Role
UX Designer- user research, service design, visual design, prototyping, testing
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Software Used
Zoom, Figma, Miro