Different tasks to fulfill
The people at the fire departement have many different tasks to fulfill like checking equipment and maintenancing vehicles. But during an emergency the workspace shifts.
Different tasks to fulfill
When the fire departement gets informed of an emergency, everyone at the station drops anything they are doing and prepare immediately for the deployment.
Get used to new surroundings
To gain more information on the emergency one person needs to take a seat in the control center.
Here, the person needs to get a quick overview of the emergency, send out an alarm to other fire fighters and provide the keys to the vehicles needed.
Since time during an emergency is critical, the person Since time during an emergency is critical, the person arriving first in
arriving first in the control room needs to switch firin the control room needs to switch
from an analogue work environment
to a
and get an overview
of the situation as quick as possible. The current workplace is overcrowded with screens, extremely dark and too large for the person in charge. In addition, there is a constant change between taking notes with pen and paper, radio contact and digital logging of the confusing software.
Four independently running programs (documentation, radio and vehicle protocol, list of persons, navigation) are used in the operations centre, in which it is difficult to find one's way around. In general, the programs are poorly designed. The font sizes are too small. Icons and pictures are hardly used. Buttons are not arranged logically. Small distances between the contents cause confusion and a lot of white space is used.
Tedious documentation process
After finishing the operation the person in the control center needs to document the whole deployment by hand. In addition each squad leader delivers a sheet with information regarding people on each car and equipment that was in use.
The person in the control room needs to
on a
and has to document the whole deployment
which results in them
for other tasks.