Extinguish
An exposure tracking app for long term firefighter health
UI/UX
Mobile
Research
Ensuring long term health among firefighters
Exposure tracking in a mobile through sensors for health analysis post fire incidents
Extinguish emerged from the need to safeguard firefighters. Developed during my MS HCI program at
Indiana University, the goal of this app is to address the challenge of monitoring and managing firefighter's
exposure levels, ensuring their long-term well-being.
Role
Responsible for primary and white paper
research, conceptualization, visual
design, prototyping and user testing
Timeline
September’ 23 - October’ 23
6 weeks
Team
2 UX researchers , 2 UX designers
Problem Space Identified
Firefighters face the exposure to hazardous materials, gases, smoke, and a lack of real-time health
monitoring. Currently, there is no comprehensive system in place to track their vital health metrics,
and exposure levels during fire incidents.
“How might we simplify the process of reporting and documenting environmental hazards and exposures faced by firefighters to support long-term health monitoring?”
Our Solution
The core solution involves an app that, offers insights into health and exposure metrics and
enabling efficient data sharing with healthcare professionals.
The project's key objectives include enhancing firefighter safety, improving vital health metric
monitoring, and enabling timely medical interventions.
Exposure Tracking
Firefighters can track their exposure levels
and time in smoke according to the run
they’ve been in.
Appointment booking
Firefighters can book a doctor or test
appointment when they get alerts on their
exposure is high
Past medical records
The records of past appointments and
tests can be viewed at any time for
reference
Empathize
Empathize
Define
Ideate
Design
Test
Observations
User Interviews
Research
Affinity Mapping
Stakeholder Mapping
User Persona
Brainstorming
Storyboarding
Information
Architecture
Sketching
Wireframing
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Think Aloud
Heuristic Analysis
My Design Process
Empathize
“Firefighters are more than three times as likely to
die from certain cancers than the general population”
Secondary Research
Occupational Perils
During our secondary research we learned that firefighters are exposed to highly toxic substances in virtually
every fire and that some toxins can accumulate in the body after repeated exposures.
"Firefighters are exposed to a variety of carcinogens during their work,....These exposures can lead to an
increased risk of developing cancer."
Cancer Incidence and Mortality among Firefighters: (2023) by MDPI
Firefighter Cancer Support Network
Cancer caused 66 percent of the career firefighter line-of-duty deaths from 2002 to 2019
Discovery of firefighter chemical exposures using military-style silicone dog tags
"Firefighters are exposed to a variety of hazards during their work, including heat, smoke, and toxic gases.
These hazards can lead to a number of health problems, including cancer, respiratory problems, and heart
disease."
User interviews and observations
Seeing past the smoke
We conducted observations and interviews as our primary research to gain deeper insights into firefighters'
experiences and challenges.
Majority of the observation was done in fire stations.
I also went on non emergency runs with the firefighters to understand their procedures before and after
incident runs.
“Firefighters are highly prone to various cancers, skin, lung tongue and esophagus, testicular cancer."
"I have skin cancer, and I can contribute it to my line of work.”
"It can be very, very nerve-wracking."
Early Insights from the Field
These are our main findings from the primary research
Exposure Concerns
There is a prevalent concern
regarding the exposure to gases
and environmental hazards
during firefighting.
Documentation Demand
All interviewees emphasized the
need for better documentation
regarding exposure and health
impacts.
System Gap
There is no comprehensive system
to document their exposure to
gases and environmental hazards.
Unpredictability
Firefighters have very
unpredictable incident runs which
leads to firefighters having less
time to take care of their health.
One interviewee, diagnosed with skin cancer, attributed it to his profession.
Define
Who are our users ? What do they value ?
Making sense of the data
Digging through the ashes
How Might We Statement
To give more clarity and design direction we came up with a how might we statement
“How might we simplify the process of reporting and documenting environmental hazards and exposures faced by firefighters to support long-term health monitoring?”
8 interviews
8 observations
192 data points
We used an affinity diagram to streamline and put the data in themes
Affinity Mapping
Influence
Low
High
Interest
Low
High
Family
members
Friends
Private
Doctor
Firefighter
Health and
wellness
Squad
Members
Officer in
charge
Fire
department
Keep Satisfied
Actively Engaged
Keep Informed
Monitor
Are we leaving out potential stakeholders?
To add layers of motivation for firefighters fully incorporate the solution we identified other stakeholders who might have interest
and influence over the user.
Stakeholder Mapping
Key themes of the interviews identified which directed our design solution were:
Multiple emergency calls per day,
Protocols and tasks post-fire incident
consume valuable time. They have
limited time for extensive data
reporting.
Time Constraints:
Firefighters are “set in their ways” and
they have resistance to changing
established practices.
Behavioral Challenges:
Numerous tasks post-incident
contribute to workload. Limited
capacity for additional
documentation efforts
Reporting Challenges:
Who are we building for?
To further refine our understanding of user needs, we created user a persona. This persona served as
detailed representations of our target users, helping us maintain a user-centric approach throughout
the design process.
Eric Jones
Demographics
Age: 34 years old
Education: High School
Hometown: Indianapolis, US
Family: Married , 2 Kids
Occupation: Firefighter
Bio
👤
Eric is a firefighter who spends most of his time performing different tasks when he
is not on the run. He likes working out and going to fire incidents.
"It is not a job, but a team work where we all work
together and have each other's backs as we spend 1/3rd
life in the fire department it is our second home”
Fustrations
😡
👎 He had a difficult time reporting the
injury for the first time.
👎 He feels that the heavy suits limits
mobility.
👎 He feels that wearing a mask should
be mandatory.
Goals
📌
👍 He wishes for more fire runs as it is exciting.
👍 He feels very supported through peer group.
👍 He wishes for a mandatory workout routine.
Our key user and design requirements were
What did we learn ?
1. Simplifying the process of reporting and tracking exposure incidents.
2. Eliminating the need for manual entry of exposure data
3.Providing the user with steps after analysis for their long-term health.
4. Avoiding any additional weight burden on their already heavy gear
Brainstorming and Sketching
Crazy 8s and storyboarding
Keeping our how might we statement in mind we began to brainstorm our ideas using the crazy 8 method
This allowed us to have a large volume of ideas in a short time with our goal being to push beyond our first ideas, which are often the least
innovative, and to generate a wide variety of solutions to our problem space
Some of the ideas we came up with
Design Solution
After the brainstorming session, three ideas were shortlisted. After a social, economic and technical feasibility study our final solution is:
A health-tracking wearable with sensors, providing real-time data
for post-analysis.
How it works
The firefighter monitoring app will integrate wearable sensors to collect real-time exposure data during firefighting.
The system aims to provide insights into health and exposure metrics, facilitating data sharing with healthcare professionals.
Storyboard
Design and Testing
Design Exploration
Wireframes
With the design solution idea in mind we started creating wireframes which we iterated based on user
feedback following a participatory design method
USABILITY TESTING
Tweaking and fixing design issues
We conducted think aloud sessions with 8 firefighters. They were tasked to:
Look at their exposure for a particular day
Book an appointment with the doctor
Option to select run
It is important for firefighters to select the run while reporting an injury which was not in the previous design
“Ya, I’ll need to report according to the specific run, that's the current protocol”
Improved the graph readability
The graph to track the exposure was not readable for specific days.
I added a component which highlights the day you would want to
be looking at.
“Its kinda difficult to see for a particular day, say i
want to view for Sunday, I can’t view the exact
amount”
Made the exposure screen more intuitive
Changed the date select option to a slider for more visibility.
Removed the motivation text because it used up the limited attention
and was not relevant to the design goal which was tot display the
exposure
Made the “Time in smoke” and “Total Exposure” more inviting to click
on
Final Designs
Tracking Exposure
Firefighters can view and track their exposure and time in smoke for a particular day and take timely action like book an appointment or test
Introducing
Extinguish
Viewing past records
The past appoints and tests are stored in the app for the firefighters to view at any time
Booking an appointment
Firefighters can have the ability to book appointments and tests on the app after viewing their exposure levels
Future Scope
Expanded User Base: As the initial app addresses the needs of firefighters, the future scope could involve expanding the user base to other
professions or industries that face similar environmental hazards. This could include industrial workers, emergency responders, or construction
workers.
Data Analytics and Research: The data collected through the app could be a valuable resource for research on the long-term health effects of
environmental exposures. Future scope might involve collaborations with researchers and institutions to analyze the data and contribute to
scientific understanding.
Training and Education: The app could be a valuable tool for training new firefighters on environmental hazards and safety protocols. Future
scope could involve developing educational modules and partnerships with training academies.
If we had more time
Explore other stakeholder’s interface: We would have liked to interview doctors and try to understand what data they might need to better treat
the users. Also we would have liked to explore the possibility of the doctors themselves having an interface with access to the users records and
what that might have looked like
More research on the protocol of manual entry : We would have liked to better understand the required fields and data that the fire department
might need in the manual entry process
Data and privacy : More research on how to safeguard their health data and keep their information secure
Better adhere to the WACG standards : We would have liked to follow the accessibility guidelines more , considering that other people apart from
firefighters might use this app
This Case study has been parked since 2023.
This was one of my first case studies and although I am proud of my work and the learnings I gained I can see many opportunities of improvement and growth here.
