Survey Reveals First Responder Wish List for Communications Tech
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By Tammy Leytham
First responders have spoken, and now their wish list is in the hands of developers, purchasers, and department heads.
An extensive research project conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology details what police, fire, emergency medical and 911 dispatch responders think about the communications technology they use on a regular basis and how they would like it to be improved.
More than five years in the making, the Voices of First Responders project reflects the input of 7,182 respondents. Three overarching requests stand out. Public safety communications technology should:
be trustworthy
be controllable
reduce user frustration
The results of the study – the largest of its kind to investigate public safety personnel user experiences – provide a wealth of data to help developers create more useful devices.
“First responders are people who go to the scene with the goals of saving lives and protecting the public,” said NIST industrial engineer Yee-Yin Choong. “Our team set out to understand this technology from their perspective, to find out what is working for them and what isn’t.”
While the findings are aimed at the research and development community, the team hopes to also reach administrators who make purchases. “Technology needs to be trustworthy, and the users need autonomy over it,” Choong said. “Our results indicate that if you focus on those things, the users will be happier.”
The team distilled the data into six guidelines:
Improve current technology — more important than developing new technology is improving what first responders currently have.
Reduce unintended consequences — develop technology that does not interfere with or distract from first responders’ attention to primary tasks.
Recognize that “one size does not fit all” — technology must accommodate public safety’s wide variety of needs, across disciplines, districts, and contexts of use.
Minimize “technology for technology’s sake” — develop technology with and for first responders driven by their user characteristics, needs and contexts of use.
Lower product and service costs — develop technology at price points that departments can afford and make it scalable for widespread distribution.
Require usable technology — technology should make it easy for the user to do the right thing, hard to do the wrong thing, and easy to recover when the wrong thing happens.
The detailed survey asked about particular pieces of technology – radios, phones, laptops, and even headsets and earpieces used by call center dispatchers. The survey also asked specifics such as frequency of use and problems encountered.
After obtaining raw survey results, the team spent three years analyzing the data and developed a total of 14 publications detailing findings. The data are freely available online, and users can enter specific queries and create charts that allow for more effective analysis.
“For a developer, the data might help you design a better radio, but it also might give you information you never thought of,” Choong said. “One police officer said his body camera needs to show the court exactly what he saw. It should indicate that he was upside down and in the dark, but it shouldn’t change the video contrast, which can make it appear that something in that dark room was plainly visible.”
The study fills a gap in public safety communications research, which previously focused on the technology itself, not user interactions in real-world situations, she said.