User-Centered Design in Emergency Management: The Leadership Factor

By Norman E. Groner, PhD, and Kenneth J. Grossberger

Emergencies induce high tension and emotion, create confusion, test the strong and overcome the weak. Even the best plans cannot account for all contingencies, and too many times, emergency responses devolve to small ad hoc groups that rely more on individual creativity than an emergency plan lying forgotten at the bottom of a desk drawer.

User-centered design (UCD) seeks to improve the performance of all kinds of systems where people’s conduct determines favorable outcomes. Emergency and safety systems are among such systems. User-centered design treats the users of such systems—both the people with defined responsibilities during emergencies and those they are protecting—as key contributors to solving problems as they arise.

In the Handbook of Human Factors, Stanney and his coauthors explain that UCD “considers users’ roles and responsibilities as the key design objective to be met and supported by advancing technologies.” By focusing on users’ needs, emergency plan design can be more flexible and more intuitive as new variables appear and unforeseen problems occur.

UCD recognizes that design must accommodate the limitations of users. People won’t remember complicated plans that they will rarely, if ever, use. Instead, UCD tries to provide information and tools to help people adapt to emergencies when they occur. Training is necessary, but instead of memorizing procedural lists, users learn to recognize situations, as well as how and why to respond appropriately. In short, UCD respects people’s ability to make decisions instead of assuming they will panic without rigid control from some greater authority.

More traditional approaches to systems design see user behavior as a reaction to stimuli according to a desired outcome. Consider the example of fire alarms. The signal is supposed to make people stop their activities immediately and leave the building. We all know how well that works.

On the other hand, UCD provides people with the information and tools they need to make their own decisions. For example, vocal alarm systems that describe the emergency and recommend the best response have proven far more successful in evoking the desired response than simple alarm signals. Simply put, UCD considers people as facilitators of the emergency plan instead of potential  impediments that must be forcibly controlled.

Any successful emergency plan requires a combination of tools and training to help people pursue one primary goal: saving lives. While people are capable of exemplary behavior and great sacrifice under difficult conditions, UCD can help make such sacrifice unnecessary. An ounce of user-centered design is worth reams of unread, sleep-inducing emergency plans.

Applications of UCD

UCD can improve systems, tools, hardware, planning, training and coordination. For example, UCD can improve specialized tools in emergency management, such as chairs designed to assist persons with disabilities in descending stairs. UCD ensures that the use of such chairs is intuitive, requiring minimal or no training. People will avoid tools that are too complicated, and during an emergency, no one wants to read instructions on how to assemble a device. But if the stair-descent device is quickly understood, easy to use and readily available, users can evacuate a disabled person to safety instead of becoming casualties as an unintended consequence of poor design.

While product design offers the most obvious use of UCD, the approach can also apply to leadership during emergencies. Emergencies are characterized by high levels of uncertainty, extreme emotions and confusion, and the constraints of limited time and resources. A “user-centric” leader will not try to force or coerce compliance with orders. As reflected in recent accounts of low compliance with hurricane evacuation orders, people are unlikely to follow instructions that do not make intuitive sense. Instead, enlightened leaders try to explain why their recommended course of action makes better sense than the alternatives. This method may take some extra time, but people are more likely to comply with such requests. This is especially true in settings where leaders lack practical authority over people.

The more traditional and conventional approach uses the command-and-control method (C2). When C2 is applied to emergencies, people are given instructions and expected to follow them. This approach forms the basis for the incident command system and its variants. It is very effective when leaders can accurately assess situations and have a clear, recognized line of authority over the people they need to command.

Unfortunately, the C2 approach is often employed where leaders lack practical authority and where followers understand their situations better than the leaders. The C2 approach promotes the belief that 1) providing the information behind the orders only confuses people and 2) without instructions, people will likely behave in an erratic, panicked manner. However, research in both fire emergencies and natural disasters reveals that chaotic behavior is very rare. Instead, people tend to make the best decisions they can given the great stress and uncertainty of emergency situations. Another problem with C2 is that it can take too much time and resources to collect, synthesize and analyze the information needed to issue sensible commands.

UCD has the additional benefit of making users their own leaders. While any team structure requires leaders and followers, UCD accounts for the variable of isolation by training each user to be prepared to literally lead him- or herself to safety. One example is to have workers in a highrise commercial building walk their primary and secondary evacuation routes during lunch time at least once per month. This exercise teaches them how to exit during an emergency, even if conditions are dark and smoky. Similarly, users who understand the protection features of buildings— such as pressurized stairs, the limited capacity of stairs to evacuate everyone simultaneously, the hazards of elevator use during fires and so forth—are more likely to make effective decisions on their own behalf.

The evacuations of the World Trade Center Towers on September 11th illustrate these principles. No evidence indicates widespread irrational and panicky behavior. Instead, people remained relatively calm given the circumstances. Below the impact areas, they were largely successful in leaving the towers, even though the standard emergency procedures and occupant training were not very relevant to this type of event. Also, before the second airplane rendered it useless, the public address system issued instructions to building occupants, as did security guards, who asked people to return to their offices. Many people—as luck would have it—refused to follow these instructions because they didn’t make good, intuitive sense given the situation.

Enhancing leadership with UCD

A more sophisticated, user-centered approach to emergency-system design can encourage better leadership and independent action. An effective leader will react quickly to the first emergency notification because he or she has been trained to recognize emergency situations and how to best respond. He or she understands the nature of the hazard and the protective features of the facility well enough to explain why the recommended actions make good sense. An effective leader doesn’t expect people to follow just because he or she is in charge, but rather because his or her recommendations make good sense given the situation.

Unfortunately, the engineering community charged with facility design rarely considers how their designs can help leaders and individuals respond better to emergencies. At a workshop on emergency evacuation, held in June 2004 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an executive of a respected engineering firm discussed seven issues for egress modeling in fire emergencies. Only one made use of UCD, and none included leadership factors.

In a world where technology and systems maintain a disproportionate focus, planners need to keep the human leadership factor in the forefront of emergency-planning design. For example, two-way portable radios are a necessity for security and safety systems and vital during emergencies. However, their use can cause as many problems as they solve due to problems such as information overload, failure to control channel access and a lack of standardized language.

In the portable radio example, UCD might suggest using a single channel so that the fire incident commander can request and acquire needed information and issue instructions that are intelligible, make obvious strategic sense, and originate from the single person in authority. UCD might also train people to respond according to plan even if the radios don’t work or are unavailable—to once again become their own leaders. Leadership by UCD principles mitigates people’s unreliability during crises by enabling adaptive and effective independent action.

UCD is based on the idea that we need to help people help themselves. Rather than issuing commands to people they don’t really control, effective leaders need to provide the information people need to make good decisions. Ideally, people get good information even in the absence of a leader. Moreover, information needs to be provided in a manner that is consistent with human capabilities. Simple “mental models” that explain the nature of hazards and protective building features and procedures are more likely to be recalled than memorized procedures.

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