Context
To ensure our solution addressed the real needs of our users, our discovery phase began with a foundational task: interviewing existing floor managers. Our goal was to understand their current practices during emergency situations and how they currently communicate with their employees when an incident occurs. This research was crucial for identifying pain points and informing the design of a solution that would be both intuitive and effective in a high-stress environment.

Discovery
My role in this brief but impactful engagement was to evaluate the core problem, collaborate on a solution, and deliver a working proof of concept to the development team. This prototype served as a clear blueprint, enabling the team to scope the project and begin building a mobile application designed to save lives.

Who are the users and what is their work environment?
Our users are factory floor managers who oversee the day-to-day operations of a manufacturing facility. Their environment is often loud, fast-paced, and potentially hazardous. It’s a high-stress role that requires them to be both a leader and a hands-on problem-solver. They are responsible for safety, communication, and ensuring production stays on schedule.

How do they currently communicate, especially during crises?
During a crisis, communication on the factory floor is often reliant on slow, fragmented methods. The process might involve:

• Verbal communication: Yelling, whistles, or air horns.
• Physical alerts: Pulling a lever, pressing a button on a wall, or using a two-way radio.
• Manual cascades: A floor manager might have to go to each section of the factory to inform employees or rely on a “chain of command” that can break down under pressure.

These methods are often supplemented by signs, digital displays, or even text messages to a small group of people.

What are their unmet needs and significant pain points?
Their unmet needs and the pain points of their current communication methods are directly linked to the high-stakes nature of their environment. The most significant issues are:

Ineffective Communication: The sheer noise of the factory floor can make verbal alerts or overhead announcements ineffective. Additionally, they lack a dedicated, centralized system to quickly send an alert to a wide audience.

Delayed Information: In a crisis, every second counts. Current methods are often too slow to get a message to all employees at the same time, leading to life-threatening delays.

Fragmented Workflow: Managers have to use a combination of different tools and methods to communicate, which is inefficient and confusing, especially in a high-stress situation.

Lack of Confirmation: There is no reliable way to know if an employee has received or understood a critical message. This uncertainty can lead to unnecessary risk.

Reaching Alignment via Design Sprint
To rapidly design and validate the “Crisis Alert” system, we would conduct a one-week Design Sprint with key stakeholders, including factory managers and employee representatives. The sprint’s primary goals were to:

• Provide a simple, reliable, and fast user experience for both managers and employees.
• Offer managers clear visibility into employee safety status via an “I’m Safe” check-in feature.
• Create an intuitive, event-driven workflow for managers to publish alerts quickly and effectively.
• Highlight the most critical information for employees through clear, accessible notifications.

The first two days would be dedicated to defining the core problem and establishing collective clarity, using insights from our UX discovery. The remaining three days would focus on ideation, rapid prototyping of the most promising concepts for the iPhone app, and testing that prototype with actual factory employees. By the end of the week, we would have a validated prototype ready for further refinement, ensuring the solution is effective in a realistic setting and meets critical user needs.week, we would have a validated prototype ready for further refinement.

Validated Prototype & Key Outcomes
Following our one-week Design Sprint, we successfully produced a high-fidelity, interactive prototype of the “Crisis Alert” system. The prototype was tested directly with end-users, and the outcomes directly addressed our initial goals by delivering:

• A validated workflow that allows managers to send a critical alert in under 30 seconds.
• A simple, one-tap “I’m Safe” check-in feature for employees that was universally understood during testing.
• A real-time safety dashboard for managers, providing an immediate and clear overview of their team’s status.
• A notification design that proved highly effective through distinct visual, audible, and haptic alerts.

We dedicated the final day of the sprint to testing the prototype with factory employees and managers in a simulated crisis environment. The positive feedback from these sessions confirmed that the design is intuitive, addresses the critical needs of both user groups, and is effective even under pressure. The sprint concluded with a validated and user-approved prototype, establishing a confident foundation to proceed with full-scale development.