Real-time earthquake alerts
Mobile app & responsive web design
The project idea initially stemmed from my own personal life experience. Living far away from my family and childhood friends, I am slow at receiving news from areas they live in. As a result, I came up with the idea of designing a product that notifies users of real-time earthquake information from any parts of the world.
My role
UX / UI Design
UX Research
- Individual project for Google UX Design Certificate
Design tool
Figma
Timeline
8 weeks
The Problem
Users have difficulty learning about real-time earthquake events happening at locations far away from them
In many countries and regions, such as Japan and Taiwan, the government issues incoming earthquake warnings to residents of affected areas through public broadcasting services. This means you will not receive an immediate warning if you are not in the affected area.
People nowadays get informed from social media platforms frequently. The U.S. presidential election result, Korean pop stars’ latest news, Covid-19 related news and almost everything you can learn from opening your social media apps. Users can definitely know the news after a while, but it’s difficult to know something that is gonna happen or happening right now if users are not at the event location.
The Solution
Design a customized real-time earthquake alerting app and help alleviate users’ worries of the safety of loved ones.
Users hope to have control of the information they are notified.They only want information that is related to their interests. That is, enabling users to decide what kind of alert and how they want to be notified is important to users.
Research - About Earthquakes
A massive earthquake could strike San Francisco at any moment, scientists warn.
The Hayward Fault, which includes Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and Fremont, is one of the most dangerous faults in the United States — and it’s also one of the most urbanized. Not only the United States, there are many countries or regions that are likely to be affected by unpredictable yet catastrophic earthquakes any time.
Research - User Interviews
Users are people who live in the earthquake-active area or have family/friends who live in such an area. Users either use the product to alert themselves, for their loved ones, or both.
Users can be divided into these two major groups, and the insight they have are also distinctive.
Research - Competitive Analysis + The Gap
Giving users more specific alerting area options, such as a city, will be more beneficial to users. Let users decide how big the area size they want to be notified of.
The area size for notification is generally too broad in most earthquake alerting apps.Let the app be more globally accessible.
Most apps on the market only target certain country/region’s alerts. Give users an access to receive alerts from most active earthquake areas.
Use descriptive content to help users understand the severity of an earthquake.
Magnitude is an universal unit used to describe earthquakes, but users don’t know how destructive it is by reading numbers only.Incorporate a safety check feature to help update one another’s safety situation after an earthquake hits.
Other earthquake alerting apps serve a single purpose - providing information. During the interview sessions with users, many mentioned that they hope to have an easy way to learn the safety of their loved ones after the earthquake events.
The Main Insights
Users need a way to know when a big earthquake is happening and check in on their loved ones real quick.
Would people want a tool to immediately notify them of earthquakes not just in their surrounding area but also in other parts of the world? This would allow them to check in with friends and family affected by earthquakes in other parts of the world.
Over 80% of interview responses showed interest in this combined idea and 50 % of interviewees believed this mobile app may help their lives.
Design + Evaluation + Improvements
In order to design smooth user flows to set up customized alerts and add a person to the alert, I conducted 2 rounds of usability study with 10 users. I invited users living in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, California, Seattle, and Portland. They all live in earthquake active areas and also have family and friends living in such areas too.
The Final Screens of dedicated mobile app
Responsive website for promoting the mobile app
Viewers get to learn more about the product before downloading the app to their phones. Be transparent with our users, and they will be confident and happy to use our product because they know what they can benefit from it.
Designing a responsive website that can be perfectly viewed on different screen sizes of devices can help reach more audiences, which may lead to higher possibilities to help more people.
Design + Evaluation + Improvements
I wanted to learn if users could easily understand the purpose of the product and what should expect when setting up their own alerts. I presented users with high fidelity prototypes that looked like a real website and conducted a usability study with 5 users.
The Final Screens of the responsive website
If I did launch the product
If I did launch the product, I would be looking at the number of website visits and clicks of the download button on the website. It could show how interested users are in the product.
I would also be looking at the task success rate, which means the percentage of total numbers of alert creations over total number visits to the alert creation page.
Conclusion + Lesson learned
What I’d do differently next time.
Evaluate and validate design decisions as many times as possible, and be sure to test the task as precisely as possible.
I used to think that I want to test a bunch of features together so I won’t waste interviewees' time. But it is not necessarily efficient at all. I found that if I asked interviewees to do a series of actions, they may not catch every friction during the process. They may just point out some big issues and neglect those they thought to be minor issues.
If I really want to validate a particular design, I should do a usability test on it solely so I can make sure every interviewee is evaluating it and trying to give opinions on it.
