BAND TOGETHER
A LIFELINE FOR EMTS Fall 2014
Matthew Bolanos Ryan Brill Amalya Henderson Mu-Hwa Kuo Jim Martin
Band Together works to help protect and reassure EMT workers walking into potentially threatening and dangerous situations.
RESEARCH
ITERATIONS
Literature Review Personas Affinity Diagram Feasibility Chart
Wireframes Mockups Critiques Revision
FINAL DESIGN
10 / 24
THINGS WE CONSIDERED DURING OUR DESIGN EXPLORATION
Unifunctional and effective. We wanted the app to do one thing, and do that one thing well. In life-or-death situations, timing is important. With Band Together, EMTs will be able to alert their partners with one touch of a button whenever they feel threatened. Call the authorities. It has to be easy to connect their partner’s call with 911 Emergency Dispatch. When the threat level gets elevated, our app is designed to connect to 911 automatically. Work with pre-existing mental models. Our app would be used by EMTs with a broad range of technological savvy. In emergency situations, they would have to find our app intuitive. Since this app is for the iOS, we stuck with familiar designs and iconography.
OUR ITERATIONS
Multiple critiques. Our design iterations underwent multiple classroom critiques. Each revision incorporates the feedback from these critiques. Focus on the in-call screen. The in-call screen is arguably the most important part of the app. This screen has to be able to recognize the threat level of the field worker, distinguish which coworker is in the call, send vibratory feedback to the field worker to reassure someone is listening in, and connect the call to the proper authorities when the situation gets out of control. Color-coded threat elevation. Colorcoding the threat level, along with expanding the screen real estate dedicated to the field worker and getting rid of the status bar, is design solution we came up with to address a concern that came up in critique. Having the background change colors during a call communicates the threat level quickly.
FINAL DESIGN
Band Together in use by Sharon, John, and Frank.