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Millions of people worldwide face the threat of earthquakes, often lacking clear guidance on safety measures before and during such disasters. RMBL was designed to be a digital first solution that would help inform and save lives of everyone within those earthquake hot zones.
From left to right: Andrea Wilson, Jazmin Vega, Sharon You, Abigail Hill,
(Jiwon Lee missing that day)
Our team embarked on a comprehensive research journey, conducting surveys and empathizing with vulnerable communities to understand their experiences better. We analyzed existing solutions to identify shortcomings and areas for improvement. Recognizing the importance of accessibility, we ensured that our prototype adhered to AA guidelines for W3C web accessibility.
We were partnered with Red Thread Innovations (RTI) to conduct an entire design sprint and find out what is the best way to mitigate disasters in the modern day using digital first solutions.
Through the course of this sprint I was given the role of design lead and project manager by the rest of the team due to my skills in pitching and narration.
With this role I was in charge of setting up meetings with RTI, communicating between other roles to make sure thing were running smoothly and on time, ideating on concepts and bringing them to life, and more! I worked a lot in the research phases as well as feature ideation and the pitch of the final product.
For our primary focus of how to solve a potential problem that is affected in a global scale that impacts millions of people, we chose to focus on natural disaster mitigation. For market research, we have found out:
After, we identified the pain points and empathize by using these design methods:
For our primary research we translated our survey into Spanish to gain further insight from people in different regions. We got a total of 23 participants from countries such as, China, Japan, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, among others. We also put up posters around our campus for more participants as well.
From both secondary and primary research, we have found common pain points people experience during an earthquake:
We wanted to form a deeper understanding of our target users' goals, needs, experiences, and behaviors. So, we created multiple personas to showcase the diversity of our main target audience. They were created based on our research and survey results.
We chose Ayesha to be our main persona since families are the widest target audience and the most affected group as well compared to our other personas such as teachers and business owners.
We also made sure to see what competitors have at the time and if they met all of our user needs or just some.
We also compared our app with competitors such as LastQuake, NERV, and the American Red Cross and figured out what these apps lacked or how to improve upon them.
Then we ideated on our main features by creating HMW questions and features that would make our solutions unique compared to our competitors.
"How might we mitigate and prevent damages caused
to people during and before an earthquake strikes?"
We have utilized bootstrap style guide community file @ Figma and edited it to fit our application for faster & effective prototyping. We meticulously crafted a typographic design system to ensure a cohesive and user-friendly experience within our app. Then, we created our logo with Adobe express, and made sure our color palette fits the AA guidelines for W3C Web accessibility.
Using Figma, we translated the user flow into low-fidelity wireframes. Then, we continued to iterate it by gaining feedback from volunteering target audience.
After creating mid-fidelity by applying our branding and making fine tunes for our solution, we have gotten feedback from potential users by showcasing our prototype. There were 6 participants during the whole test, and we have gotten great feedback from the group.
For users to easily set up notifications for the important earthquake alerts, we have set up an onboarding process. We wanted to be transparent on what kind of information is required to use the app such as location, and create alert settings catered to the user’s preference without them fumbling through the settings.
We added an alert feature to help improve the user's needs of communication and information when they are in an earthquake event. This is to show the flow when users get notifications on earthquakes around their location. Users will be able to interact by tapping the notification and view details of the earthquake right away. During an actual earthquake event, the users will also be able to see where the source is, what to expect, and the size.
After an earthquake occurs, the location of the nearest shelter is displayed on the map according to the user's location. It also provides directions to the shelter by car, public transportation, or walking, and even provides live traffic information. This was to meet the user needs of information and health by informing the users on where to go if they feel unsafe in their current location and in turn this will help users get to a physically safe location with little hassle.
The last two features had to do with before an earthquake event. To help users prepare for earthquakes, we decided to create a guide section for earthquakes so people could prepare in advance and lessen the damage caused by earthquakes and the aftermath. We created this flow to incentivize people who finished with the guide by adding checkmarks and completion badges for a sense of accomplishment and gamification as well.
We also implemented a news and live updates feature. This gives users information and communication about global earthquakes, but also the latest news on earthquakes nearby so they can be better informed on what an event actually looks like and how to better prepare for it. This also gives the opportunity of keeping the app more relevant.
At the end of the design sprint I would say a lot more than my goals were achieved. I got the opportunity to work with an amazing team as well as the opportunity to take a lead on a large scale project for our industry professionals of RTI. I kept up to date on my management goals, pitching and narrative goals, meeting deadlines, keeping organized and overall a lot more that also had to do with the creation of RMBL and the research behind it.
For next time I would love to work a little bit more on my in-team communication skills. There were a few times where I was explaining things and using terms in a bit of a more casual way and it confused a few others. In the end I found that using visuals and sharing my screen more to explain some roadblocks was a great solution to this.
In the end the RMBL prototype was about finding a digital first solution to mitigate and prevent damages to users during and before an earthquake happens. After our rigorous research, tests, feedbacks, and pitching it to RTI, RMBL was seen as a solid solution to the issue at hand. The rest of the team and I were extremely grateful for the training RTI had given us and we were proud of our end result!
During our pitch ceremony I was also given the Purposeful Innovation: Outstanding Contributor award by RTI which recognized my exemplary leadership and contributions to purposeful innovation!
