My Fire Watch
A personal app project that helps landowners and farmers make it easier to prevent fires, monitor fires, and minimize their losses from fires.
UX Research, UI/UX Design, Product Design
2023 Fall- 2023 Winter
UX Research, UI/UX Design,
Group Project
Why Project?
The frequently occurring wildfire brought a severe impact on the lives of those victims.
In the United States, the annual economic burden of wildfires, exacerbated by global warming from both human and natural causes, is projected to increase over time, currently estimated between $71.1 billion to $347.8 billion.
Beyond economic losses, wildfires result in numerous casualties, property destruction, ecological damage, and worsened air quality. Individuals can mitigate these impacts through enhanced early warning measures, reducing the incidence and impact of fires on property and personal safety. How can we improve this situation?
How did we achieve it?
Users verify accounts with their personal information, choose their address details, and pair up with the machine. The reason for doing this is to prevent users’ data leakage.
Why Project?
Register the app!
Users verify accounts with their personal information, choose their address details, and pair up with the machine. The reason for doing this is to prevent users’ data leakage.
Website Version
Users can also view information through the web version of MyFire Watch
Register the app!
Users verify accounts with their personal information, choose their address details, and pair up with the machine. The reason for doing this is to prevent users’ data leakage.
Prepare for the fire
The app encourages users to explore fire prevention methods when there are no apparent fire hazards around. It recommends the most suitable fire prevention measures based on common methods used by users in the surrounding community.
During a fire
When a fire occurs, the app displays real-time information about the situation in the area, such as the direction of the fire, evacuation routes, and a checklist of actions to take.
Fire Recovery
Unusers can view the damage to their home through the camera after a fire and try to minimize the damage to their home according to the insurance plan they are enrolled in.
Insurance Recovery
Users can access insurance and monitoring options at any time in the settings to remotely monitor the surrounding environment of the farm. Additionally, they can learn more about home insurance and compensation terms.
Our Research
Governmental Policies and Suggestions Look-up
With selected materials drawn from the governmental websites of California Wild Fire & Forest Resilience, New Rural Fire Service of Australia, Brazil Forest Service, and Ministry of Climate Change and Civil Protection of Greece， we can gather information on currently used wild-fire solutions.
Field Interview Reports and Research Papers
To gather more accurate information and firsthand materials about real users (residents and farmers in wildfire-prone areas), we examined academic papers and field interview reports on the challenges faced by wildfire-affected residents.
Currently Existed Wild-fire Prevention System
We researched similar products on the fire-prevention topic in the market.
Interesting Findings!
We learned that lack of budget, property safety risk, and lack of fire-prevention knowledge are the three key frustrations among all 7 frustrations among our users. We used these factors to build our personas and guide our designs.
Lack of Budget: Governmental solutions are considered too expensive when being performed.
Housing Poverty: Households and farm owners often experience property loss during wildfire outbreaks, impacting their pro-fire life
Lack of Knowledge: Most of the human-caused wildfires are due to the lack of fire-prevention knowledge of the perpetrator.
Design Process
Our Users: Personas
Creating personas helps us identify the major pain points. We created two user personalities, Steve, a middle-aged land and house owner living in a California fire zone, and Cornelia, a Brazilian farm Owner.
Oppurtunity Map
We have categorized all fire prevention measures into "before the fire, during the fire, and after the fire" to seek for a better product operation process and identify oversights. We listed out the problems, opportunities, and solutions around wildfire issues as indicated in the chart.
System Map
For a fire management platform, the cooperation between the front-end and back-end is crucial for fire prevention and control. We have designed a set of reasonable front-end and back-end blueprint drawings which provide us with a framework for our future designs.
User Testing
A/B testing was done to ensure the time-efficiency of our product.
Faster retreatment during fire will significantly increase the survival rate, and offer extra time to arrange, remove, and ensure the security of users’ properties and goods.
Test Description
Assuming there is a fire incident in the northeast direction of the farm, the farm owner evacuates supplies, personnel, and livestock based on App instructions
Task
Our 12 participants were told to move game pieces on the corresponding board game based on instructions provided by the App
Test Results
We found that rather than adding a new page for each step of the evacuation (version A design), putting all the pages in one page (version B design) allows users to complete the operation process faster. So we followed the B design in the app design.
Reflect Upon
Adding the app within a map app might be a better solution？
In response to the prior critique, my response is to incorporate MyFire Watch as an additional feature within a map app, similar to operating it as a mini-program on Google Maps, akin to WeChat mini-programs. This approach not only saves costs but also helps the map app attract more users, thereby increasing corporate financial returns.
Animal Helpers
Some countries use animals to prevent wildfire!
During the research, I found out that some European countries and the United States of America raise goats and prevent wildfires by letting goats eat up the grass. Even though This method only works for those areas that consume goat meats and is not ideal for every country, it's still worth checking up!
