Beacon is an EMT navigation app, providing the fastest routes to the patients through a unified outdoor and indoor navigation system.
Providing EMTs a unified indoor and outdoor navigation system
This project was a part of Interaction Design Fundamentals course at CMU. The goal is to explore and design a mobile application for Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs).
My Role
Interaction & Motion Prototyper
Project Type
iPhone App / 4 weeks
Teammates
Juan Corzo, Zack Karrasch, Landon Paik
Saving Lives by the Second
A top priority for EMTs is to transport patients safely and as fast as possible — because every second means life or death.
Challenges
EMTs Faces Navigation Obstacles Indoor and Outdoor
No Driving Directions from GPS Systems in Ambulances
GPS systems in ambulances are used to keep track of rigs. EMTs resort to using paper maps or their personal mobile devices for driving directions.
Hard to Navigate Indoor or Complexed Locations
After arriving at a reported address, EMTs still have to navigate inside building complexes or the parking lot of a strip mall to locate patients.
Assigned to Unfamiliar Neighborhoods
EMTs, particularly in urban areas, sometimes have to pick up patients in neighborhoods they don’t usually cover due to shortage of resources.
— a New York City EMT
Beacon is a mobile app, providing a unified outdoor and indoor navigation system for EMTs. The app guides EMTs to the patient’s exact location, including the floor of the building, eliminating time wasted trying to locate the patient.
How It Works
Beacon retrieves emergency call information from the Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. The app sends a push notification and loads the pick-up location. While en route, it provides outdoor and indoor navigation. The patient’s exact location is confirmed through a text message by the emergency caller.
Onboarding
A simple onboarding process to calibrate voice for commands.
Outdoor Navigation
EMTs can quickly see the route to get to the patient as well as call details. They also have an option to switch to a satellite view to get more context of the surrounding.
Patient’s Exact Indoor Location
The patient’s exact location, including where on which floor of the building, can be retrieved once the emergency caller confirms the location through a web link.
Indoor Navigation
In case of fire, EMTs can switch from an elevator route to a stair or escalator route. EMTs can also choose a first person view to confirm what they see in front of them.
Automatic Route Back to Hospital
Once the EMTs got the patient, the app shows the route back to the hospital from the indoor location.
Research & Design Process
Reducing Cognitive Load for High-Pressured Situations
To aid EMTs in making decision under emergency, we worked on reducing cognitive load by minimizing visual clutter and added automated address upload to the app. The section below showcases iterations of visual elements to reduce clutter.
Minimizing Visual Clutter
To surface the necessary information required for EMT’s decision making, we reduced the visual weight or eliminated irrelevant information. We also put emphasis on critical visual elements.
Iteration 1
Iteration 2
Iteration 3
• Use the default Map visuals provided by Google Maps.
• ‘Call for Help’ button is in red to indicate urgency.
• Replace the thick orange store outlines with light brown lines.
• Change ‘Call for Help’ button to ‘Call Dispatcher’; the green signifies positivity and calm.
• The dotted path is more dense for better visibility.
• Increase the darkness of the store outlines for more distinct separation between walkways and stores
• Remove the store category icons.
• The elevator icon is less complex.
• Change the ‘+’ FAB to blue to show relevancy with the dotted path.
Uncovering EMTs’ Pain Points
We conducted online research and field research to explore the pain points EMTs are facing and to uncover any efficiency in the system. After our research, we created a feasibility vs. impact map, which led us to designing an application to optimize EMT response time.
Field research at UPMC Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA
We learned about the ambulance features at UPMC.
A feasibility vs. impact map of possible applications to design
Tab images for more
Design and Feedback Process
We iterated through one round of lo-fi prototype (Post-it’s) and 3 rounds of hi-fi prototypes (Photoshop). We made sure to consider how different users (EMTs, patients, and emergency callers) would interact with the app.
Building a lo-fi prototype flow map from post-its
Hi-fi prototype flow map
Hi-fi prototype flow map and feedback
Tab images for more