<aside> 🎩 Role / User Experience & Service Designer Lead

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<aside> ✅ Task/ Create a seamless onboarding process for the world's third-largest Fire Service.

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<aside> ♥️ Client / London Fire Brigade 2022.

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<aside> 💡 Keywords/ Agile, Teamwork, Processes

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Overview & context

Working on a startup sometimes means leaving the tasks you are familiar with (Such as gathering user feedback and turning it into potential functionalities, screen reviews, and design dynamics...) and exploring other roles that won't be easy at the beginning but will allow you and your team to adapt the design and final product to the people who are going to end up using it. In this case, we won the Public Tender of the London Fire Brigade, and the project needed a complete brainstorming of the way we used to train people in the organization.

Their main task is to ensure that the people within the organization (the end-users who will ultimately use the software) are engaged, empowered, and equipped to thrive in the future state.

I was responsible for supporting the people-centric aspects of organizational transformation and change initiatives related to adapting their analogue way of working towards a digital platform. I had to work closely with the designated project team, which often consisted of people within the organization who had been assigned this project in addition to their regular duties. This means that they could only allocate a portion of their time to it.

Challenge

The designated team for this project of the organization had to introduce new technologies to their peers and colleagues. The advantage was that they were part of the organization so the knowledge came first-hand directly to us so we would be capable of planning the training and the dynamics according to their standards and availability. There is always a risk of uncertainty since they wouldn't like to feel exposed to a technology they sometimes do not trust or agree with, so sometimes they can be quite critical with their feedback, thing that is always a great benefit on our side because… Who else wants only super excited and engaged users when exposing new technologies?

That would be dangerous because it won’t show the reality of an institution.

To sum up I would describe the three main pain points we had to face and overcome:

Challenge 1. Training materials and support:

Although we have successfully developed an End-User Manual (WIP link) and a Trainer's dashboard (ADD LINK HERE), the way we have done it so far couldn't cope with the magnitude of this project. We had to train the trainers and ensure that the onboarding was successful and that the feedback was positive at the end of it.

Challenge 2. New technology introduction :

LFB Live training sessions

We introduced new technology to the firefighters by adapting the training and our wording to their vocabulary. As part of the onboarding process, we recognized the importance of speaking their language and understanding their unique needs and challenges. This involved conducting extensive research and gathering insights from firefighters themselves to ensure that the training materials and communication were tailored to their specific context.

We worked closely with subject matter experts within the fire service to develop training content that was relevant and relatable. We made a conscious effort to use terminology and examples that resonated with them, incorporating their jargon and terminology into the training materials. This helped to create a sense of familiarity and comfort, making the learning process more engaging and effective.

Additionally, we organized workshops and hands-on sessions (For example the iconography dynamic ADD LINK) where firefighters had the opportunity to interact with the new technology in a practical setting. This allowed them to see firsthand how the technology could enhance their work and improve their efficiency and safety. By providing real-world examples and scenarios that aligned with their daily experiences, we were able to bridge the gap between the new technology and their existing knowledge and skills.

Overall, our approach to introducing new technology to firefighters involved a deep understanding of their unique context, adapting the training and communication to their jargon, and providing practical and efficient experiences to demonstrate the value and benefits of the technology in their work.

Challenge 3. Scalable and sustainable feedback gathering :

End-user feedback is the most important outcome we could gather, not only from the planning and preparation sessions but most of all from the live sessions.

During these training or dynamics, real firefighters who will be end-users are being exposed for the very first time to our product. Their feedback has a lack of bias or previous misconception so it is extremely valuable. This information had to be captured quickly but later had to be classified and given their proper priority.

First approach:

As previously said, the most intelligent approach would be extracting their vocabulary and also the structure they are used to learn new skills and capabilities, I personally thought that would be a wonderful idea to copy the called “Framework for the competence of rescue and Firefighting service (RFFS) personnel” we took as reference the one published at the NFCC, this document provides a framework for the development, demonstration, and maintenance of competence of FSRs who primarily regulate fire safety standards.

To sum up this framework concept will be something like this:

So having this as starting point, we brainstorming how a great onboarding experience should look like, how we could introduce the Incident Command System Software, adapt it to their needs without falling into the “made-to-order” feeling. As the ilustration shows we divided the onboarding in three different phrases plus one of consolidation.