Kyle Fire Department

Design Sprint

Overview

Assessing the perception of the community and putting forward a proposal for engaging with the Kyle fire department.

The Problem

Staffing shortages
Delays and rising costs

The Goal

To develop a long-term community engagement plan.

My Role

In order to develop an engagement plan for the fire department & community, we all followed the same design steps.

Responsiblities

User research, wireframing, prototype

Team

Lyndsie Burns – Communication Design Major Michelle Cohen – Commissioner Ryan Novak – Fire Fighter

Primary Research

Audience & users

The fire department & citizens of Kyle
Population: consists of about 80-90 thousand residents.

The problem to tackle

Delays and rising costs
Despite the rapid growth of Kyle, the department has to plan new developments to support the new zone areas.

Main Causes

Population increase
Increase in zoning developments
Delays in building a new fire station to support the new zones
National fire protection association standards (NFPA)

summary

Some assumptions we had going in were that the fire department gets funded by the city when in fact it’s funded by taxpayers through property taxation. Maintaining equipment up-to-date with (NFPA) standards has a huge financial impact on the department.

National fire protection association

https://www.nfpa.org/About-NFPA

Who is the NFPA?

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is a global self-funded nonprofit organization, established in 1896, devoted to eliminating death, injury, property and economic loss due to fire, electrical and related hazards.

What are the roles and responsibilities of NFPA?

NFPA publishes more than 300 consensus codes and standards intended to minimize the possibility and effects of fire and other risks.

Facts the fire Department consider

Rising costs make it harder to maintain most equipment up to date.
Not having the proper equipment for certain situations hinders the citizens from not getting on time help.
Ex: fire trucks with certain ladder heights.

The next closest available station may be located in another subdivision which can cause the worst response time.
The worst response time is about 12-14mins
And during this time the damage could be detrimental.

User Pain Points

Pain point

Has no say in the decision of new project developments.

Pain point

Is the last one to be informed of any major developments.

Pain point

Left with the responsibility of planning a new station.

Pain point

Needing to transfer current staff to the new station which results in staffing shortages.

Ideating Process

warm-up

We started by writing down quick phrases of what we perceive about firefighters.
Afterward, we organized the viewpoints based on internal or external perceptions.

Brainstorming

How Might We’s

Possible solutions

Key Takeaways

Impact

To prioritize the fire department to participate in providing feedback to current and future zone projects to prevent time delays and staffing shortages.

What I learned

There’s a low rate of people wanting to become firefighters. This affects staff shortages and hinders the fire department from assisting more subdivisions.

With more time and resources

Next step

Engaging the Kyle community, and gathering more feedback on how to best support the fire department with other information or solutions.

Next step

To promote more in-house tours to get more citizens to show up and understand the importance of firefighters' roles in their community.

Kyle Fire Department

Primary Research

User Pain Points

Ideating Process

Brainstorming

Key Takeaways

Impact

What I learned

With more time and resources

Next step

Next step

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