Wildfire News
A geo-spatial approach to wildfire awareness
Product
Native Mobile App (IOS, Android)
Responsive Desktop and Ipad
Client
BC Wildfire Service, Wildfire Communications Team
Role
Researcher, Designer
Time
April 2021 - October 2023
Location
BC, Canada
Framework
Agile
Other Designers
Zack Santella
Working with BC Wildfire Service
It was an amazing experience to have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the incredible work that this agency does to keep the residents of BC safe from the increasing number of wildfires each year.
provincial wildfires
Record-breaking averages
As of October 31, 2023 the wildfires in BC have been the most devastating on record, scorching 2.84 million hectares. This surpasses the average annual burned area of the past decade by more than tenfold. This indicates the growing need for wildfire suppression and management within BC and indicates the seriousness of the problem BC Wildfire is trying to address while effectively communicating these threats to the public in order to keep them safe and well-informed.
market research
The claim
The global forest wildfire detection system market has been growing steadily in the last 10 years. The market is estimated to be around $753 million USD or $1 billion CAD worldwide in 2023.
In the past decade, Canadian wildland fire management agencies have allocated between $800 million and $1.4 billion annually to safeguard Canadians, private homes, businesses, wood resources, and essential infrastructure. On average, costs have increased by about $150 million per decade since 1970.
The problem
Due to the large number of fires, the rapid pace at which the fire situation changes and the complexity of fire suppression techniques, it is difficult to deliver detailed wildfire information in a timely and easy to understand manner to the general public.
competitive analysis
I analyzed 4 popular wildfire apps paying attention to the geo-spatial mapping features and how wildfire information is being conveyed to users.
Strengths
All apps provide advanced satellite imagery for detailed fire monitoring, easy to find map legend information and clear iconography to symbolize wildfires and fire perimters. Firespot and Wildfire Info provide air quality information and Wildfire info has a high contrast feature to improve accessibility. Wildfire info also provides thermal maps and a wildfire twitter map that links to the twitter feed of various national parks and recreation areas with the US.
Weaknesses
All apps have limited customization options for users and do not allow the user save a commonly used location. All apps have limited information on wildfire information such as associated evacuations, fire surpression activities, and images of the wildfire. Wildfire info provides many layer types and map data sources, but the language used is often overly technical and the value of these layers and features isn't always clear.
Cal Fire's Wildfire Info
Wildfire Map
Firespot
Cal Fire's Wildfire Info
Wildfire Details
Firesource
Cal Fire's Wildfire Info
Wildfire Layers/Events
Australian Fires
user research
Qualitative research was conducted with the general public who live in communities that have faced wildfire threats.
What information was most valuable to you when you experienced a wildfire threat in your community?
Participants provided multiple responses with almost all partipants citing that they desired better response information, fire size, fire perimeter and evacuation process details.
Age
20 - 70 Years Old
Format
Video Conference
Background
General Public
Location
BC, Canada
Number of Participants
15
Other Research Questions
What experiences have you had where you needed wildfire information?
Where do you go to learn more about the wildfire threat?
Describe your experience when a wildfire threatened your community.
Please describe your experiences going through an evacuation.
What type of concerns do you have about wildfires in your area?
Did you struggle to find certain information?
Major Pain Points
app feedback
Feedback from the app store and emails sent to the organization were collected, analysed and organized into categories to identify the most significant pain points among current users.
Finding Fire Related Events and Out Wildfires
Users had a hard time figuring out where to go in the app to find fire danger ratings, road events, fire bans and other wildfire-related events. At times, users would get notifications about a wildfire, but by the time they opened the app the wildfire was extinguished and was not displaying on the map anymore.
Basemaps, Wildfire Details, and the Map Legend
The inclusion of fire centres names on the basemap and the lack of road overlays makes it confusing for users to find their location on the map. Users encountered challenges finding detailed wildfire information after selecting a wildfire on the map and often reported not understanding the map symbols indicating they either did not know where to go to find the map legend or could not understand it.
stakeholder reviews
Multiple design reviews took place with the business team and related government stakeholders in order to gather feedback.
Findings
Reviews with stakeholders revealed a desire to retain some of the more advanced features on the wildfire map. There was also a desire to save a set of commonly used layers so that the user does not have to turn on the same set of layers each time they open the product.
personas
Based on user research, I created 5 personas in order to communicate user needs and direct design decisions.
flow diagram
To outline the primary functionality of the product, I created simple flow diagrams of the primary tasks the user can perform. One of the flows is shown below. Fail state flows were also created, but are not shown due to space constraints.
wireframes
Once the flow diagram was established, I started creating low-fidelity wireframes of the primary flows.
Wildfire discovery flow
Report a fire flow
design validation
I connected my high fidelity designs into a clickable prototype in order to test the flow and interface with users.
research strategy
I validated my prototype with 15 users by conducting user testing session over Microsoft Teams while a colleague took notes, transcribing responses and findings. Both the live updated desktop interface and the mobile mockups were used to illicit feedback from users.
Questions focused on asking the user to complete primary tasks such as finding a wildfire of interest on the map, turning on map layers to see events like evacuations and fire bans, accessing the wildfire details pages, creating a saved location, adding a wildfire to the user's saved list and turning on notifications.
initial round of testing
Areas for improvement
During the first phase of testing, 80% of users had trouble understanding and interacting with the event list that displayed when the user selects an area on the map where there are multiple events.
Although users were able to manipulate the featured map layers, they had trouble understanding that the lack of visual feedback meant that there was no current evacuations or fire bans. All users were not immediately aware of the tabs on the map view or the wildfire details screens and, therefore did not realize there was additional information.
Each user was asked to complete 8 tasks and their scores were averaged to find a task success rate of 63% with users completing 5 out of 8 tasks successfully on average.
Other findings included a desire to see response and tactics information, air quality data, details on wildfire prevention work, weather information and more clear and plain language on full details pages (wildfires and evacuations, fire bans).
second round of testing
Areas for improvement
Since not all map elements had an associated icon, 20% of users had trouble understanding which elements on the map were clickable. 50% of users had trouble interacting with the featured map layers and map legend which displayed on the same page. These features were separated in the final iteration.
Each user was asked to complete 10 tasks and their scores were averaged to find a task success rate of 70% with users completing 7 out of 10 tasks successfully on average.
Positive Feedback
Users were able to successfully turn on and manage notifications, add a saved location and add a wildfire to their watch list or saved events page. Users were able to interact with the updated tabs on the wildfire details pages and were happy with the level of detail and plain language updates.
design iteration
After testing was complete, there was 6 months of continous design work to update the mockups, flows and interface elements in order to provide design solutions to pain points identified through user testing and research.
visual design
Once the initial flow was complete, I defined the fonts and colors I would use during high-fidelity design work.
Color Pallette
Primary colors, background colors, font colors
Font
Noto Sans
Regular, Medium, Semibold
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHh
Government branding with a modern look and feel
BC Government branding guidelines were applied to the designs. A more modern look and feel was achieved by using a font that had various font weights, slightly saturated colors and by associating symbols to each wildfire-related event. When needed custom graphics were created to capture more complex topics, such as incident management teams.
original product
hi-fidelity designs
Once the initial flow was complete, I created high fidelity designs for each of the primary flows. I started with the map flow since it was the primary feature of the product.
prototype
I connected my high fidelity designs into a clickable prototype that I allowed me to test the concept with users.
Feature Layers Flow
Wildfire Details Flow
the launched product
Download the BC Wildfire App or visit the BC Wildfire dashboard website to see the re-designed product.
next step + key learnings
Enhancements
A number of design improvements were documented and passed on to the client in order to be revisted in the future. Some of these improvements include the way wildfire-related events are displayed on the map, further alignment between desktop and mobile and another dashboard view that focuses on preparedness. This work is ongoing during 2024.
Handoff
Throughout the course of this project, steps for handoff were improved through discussion with the technical team. Some improvements were made to the way artboards and files were organized within Figma and the way technical acceptance criteria was managed in order to better facilitate handoff.
Participant Recruitment
Another key learning occurred when research was being conducted with different user groups. The main takeway was that in the future it would be beneficial to make time to handle participant recruitment in order to gain access to a more diverse set of participants.
Ways to Connect
Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to learn more about my experience and design work or if you would like to collaborate on something in the future.
© Jacqueline Williams 2024 • UX Designer