In California we all know a large scale earthquake will hit us in the near future, but many of us are not prepared for it. In Japan we work together with our neighborhood community to provide information on where emergency camps and supplies would be during a large disaster. With these pieces of information we are better able to calmly handle these difficult and frightening events.

The Earthquake Emergency Guide Application will provide valuable information to prepare for a large-scale earthquake and provide information what to do when an earthquake occurs. This application will have Bluetooth support to ensure that during a large-scale disaster users will be able to communicate in the event that there is no wifi or internet access.

For the Earthquake Emergency Guide application I completed the competitive analysis of different mobile applications and websites. These websites and applications were in the same space of disaster preparations and most likely they have a similar user base. To find out how people are prepared for a large earthquake I conducted online surveys by Survey Monkey and interviewed in different age groups.

From the surveys and interviews 64% of the people know that they would be able to find earthquake preparation information online and 61% of the people had an experience with a large earthquake. However, 72% of people are currently not prepared for a large earthquake.

In the survey I asked people what information would be helpful for their earthquake preparations. 92% of the people think that a full list of items that people should have prepared for a large earthquake.

As a result of these findings I learned that there is good potential to promote awareness for proper earthquake preparedness. Also, because people rely on cell phones to connect to their families and friends during a disaster, having an emergency chat feature with the wireless mesh network via Bluetooth would be a valuable feature. In addition, having a complete supply list like the one that Japanese earthquake survivors found valuable would be a useful feature.

To focus on target user's attributions, actions, and empathy, three personas were created as well as an empathy map for each persona.

In order to define the main features of the application, a minimum viable product plan was made and user stories crafted.

To make clear structures and contents of the Earthquake Application a sitemap was created using Draw. io. protoAnd to understand how users categorise the emergency supplies and events of before, during and after a large earthquake I ran card sortings by using OptimalSort. OptimalSort card sorting was used to help understand how users would categorize the emergency supplies needed and actions to perform at each stage of an earthquake; before, during, and after.

The Emergency Supplies cards were sorted into similar categories so I standardized them into two categories; Essential Supplies and Personal Supplies.

The Earthquake Events cards were slightly challenging because more than half of the user didn’t get the concept that earthquakes had different stages; before, during, and after, that requires different responses. Because of that, I would plan to ask the users to sort the Events cards to the three categories; Prepare, During, and Immediately After.

While looking into the card sorting results, I noticed that one of the participants named the Earthquake Supplies as Emergency To-Do List. This to-do list idea inspired me to add a progress indicator to the supply pages. That indicator would inform users how much of the emergency supplies they have collected.

  • Sitemap
  • Card sorting
  • Analysing the results to iterate the application contents

For the user testing of the gathering supplies wireframes, I asked testers to complete the following tasks so that I would know whether they would be able to find the information that they are looking for and that they would be able to edit a supply list. Also, I would like to find out if any testers would be interested in the Preparation Indicator on the page.

I asked my testers to complete these tasks;

  • Please find “Earthquake insurance”

  • Please find information about “Earthquake insurance”

  • Please remove “Passport” from the list

Imagine you have a son name Drake and you are going to create his supply list.

  • Please add a category and name it “Drake’s items”

  • Please add item “Legos” under the category “Drake’s items”

  • Please check off the “Legos” from the list.

Most of those tested could go through the editing list tasks without many problems and they recognized the Preparation Indicator as an indicator. However, all of the users tried to swipe the first screen even if the screen had two large buttons; the Essential Supplies and the Personal Supplies. Surprisingly one of the users didn’t even think that they were buttons. The other tester thought the Essential Supplies was more important than the Personal Supplies because the Essential Supplies was above of the Personal Supplies.

To resolve these problems I considered changing the prototype to be swipeable. Also, because the two buttons distracted the flows of the users, I unified the Essential list and the Personal list to a big list, so the testers would see the entire list immediately. In addition, I added an overlaid instruction that would be only displayed at the first time to make sure the users understand that the supply list was editable.

Click here to see the prototype.

In closing the UX process to improve the product by refining contents and features. Also the UX process helped to better understand the customer’s needs and earn the customer’s empathy.