FireEye Usability Assessment of Head-Mounted Display for Firefighters

1
FireEyeUsability Assessment of Head-Mounted
Display for Firefighters

• Joel Wilson
• Alan Van Pelt
• Jon Snydal
• April 26
• 2005

2
Introduction

• Firefighting requires quick and complicated
  assessing, planning, coordinating
• High-rises frequently inadequate
• information for
• Situational awareness,
• navigation, fire conditions
• Fire Information and Rescue
• Equipment (FIRE) project started
• Spring 2002 from ME 221 class
• project and CFD 911 inspiration
• Started semester with physical
• prototype and a barebones floor plan GUI

3
Goals

• Determine and prioritize most helpful information
  to display
• Improve our understanding of firefighter job
  requirements, conditions, situations they face
• Gather useful information to progress and improve
  FIRE project

4
Methodology

• Ethnographic research
• Task analysis of large building incidents
• Interviews
• Questionnaire
• Lo-fi usability tests
• Heuristic analysis Nielsen Mankoff (UCB)
• Interface design research
• Cartographic analysis

5
Interviews

• Interviewed 4 high-ranking firefighters at 3
  Berkeley fire stations
• Informal usability test of paper, digital
  physical prototypes
• Questionnaire to prioritize information they
  want/need to see in heads-up display

6
Physical Considerations

• Hot, wet, low visibility, loud
• Heavy gear, limited dexterity
• Mask difficult to communicate through, fogs up
• Often carrying things

7
Cognitive Considerations

• High stress, exhaustion
• Disorientation frequent
• Much reliance on experience rather than precise
  information
• Pattern recognition is key to decision making
  (Klein, Sources of Power)
• Not much attention to spare elsewhere

8
Hardware Design Implications

• Firefighting equip-ment must be
• Heatproof
• Waterproof
• Shockproof
• Mostly hands-free
• Simple

9
Hardware Design 2

• Large rubber button
• Very easy to press / hold
• Attaches to upper body
• Vibro-tactile interface
• Mask SCBA tank warning
• Belt gives navigation cues (Lindeman et al., CHI
  05)

10
Prioritization of visual elements

• Small GUI minimize distraction
• Must prioritize info
• Used rate and rank questionnaire

• Most important items
• Zoom feature
• Where user has been
• Nearest exits

• Location of
• company
• Messages
• from IC

11
GUI design

• Informal usability testing
• Low fidelity prototypes
• Used Flash and paper prototypes
• Explored map frame of reference methods
• Egocentric map automatically reorients
• Performed more efficiently in army experiments
  (Kumagai, SPIE 03)
• Exocentric fixed map orientation
• No clear favorite, but probably egocentric
• Possibly integrate user option of either one

12
GUI Design

• Learn from video games!
• X-boxes, Halo
• Fog-of-war

13
Cartographic Analysis

• Pre-planning maps
• Firefighting equipment / water sources
• Architectural features
• Firefighters take notes on these maps during
  inspection
• These do not exist for most buildings!
• Examples Sears Tower, UCB buildings, Berkeley
  schools
• Standard map symbols from firefighter manual

14
Micro-Cartography

• Peephole Displays (Ka-Ping Yee, CHI 03)
• City Lights (Zellweger et al., CHI 03)

• Halo Arcs (Baudisch Rosenholtz, CHI 03)
• Assists navigation to non-visible places
• Usability testing showed they were faster than
  arrows

15
Micro-Cartography 2

• MOVE In-vehicle navigation system (Lee et al.,
  CHI 05)
• Distortion abstraction

16
Concept Sketch
17
Conclusion

• Whats next?
• New software and hardware prototypes
• Large scale survey
• Mock fire in Etcheverry
• Observing firefighting training exercises