Leo Frishberg

Looking back at plan AHEAD™: exercising user- centered design in emergency management

Plan AHEAD™- All Hazard Exercise Development and Administration is a usability test development tool designed for emergency management agencies focused on disaster preparedness. Several user- centered design principles employed to develop Plan AHEAD are discussed including ethnographic research, rapid prototyping and iterative design. Specific design decisions that rely on these approaches are highlighted. Alternative design approaches that failed to meet user requirements are included. Plan AHEAD™ incorporated design elements that were novel to the Emergency Exercise Development domain. In part because of the intensive user- centered design approaches, Plan AHEAD continues to be used by emergency managers worldwide; even with the approaches described, the application can benefit from several usability improvements.

Create, Discover, Analyze

When viewed through the lens of a design thinking cycle, PrD differs from other forms of user-centered design in its starting position. Rather than beginning user engagement with a discovery process teams begin in the concept phase crafting an artifact. Only after having an artifact in hand do teams engage with users to discover the problems and challenges they face.

Design to Fail

We can’t avoid being wrong. The real questions are how wrong are we and how long do we take to find out? Instead of refining ideas and trying to make those ideas “succeed,” PrD advises us to purposefully manufacture failures and, by failing quickly , to learn about the problem space at hand. In this chapter, we discuss the importance of failing as a strategy of problem exploration, as well as the attributes of a “successful failure.”

Chapter 11 – Believing Our Own Stories

PrD requires us to learn from failing . Thinking we’ve got our story right and working to confirm that story creates opportunity costs. When we believe too much in our own stories, we are unaware of the wealth of insights obtained by watching our ideas fail. Thinking in this fashion is counterintuitive. We don’t normally try to prove ourselves wrong. To embrace self-doubt requires overcoming our cognitive biases. It also requires changing the way we approach our artifacts and engagement with external stakeholders. Failure breeds constructive experimentation, leading to insight and innovation. Believing our own stories and insisting we’re right preempts such discoveries from occurring.

PrD and Design Thinking

PrD relies on design thinking: the switching back and forth between deductive/inductive and abductive reasoning. Through this rapid back and forth, PrD shines a light on specific problems as they relate to the organization. Further, PrD differs from other forms of user-centered design by starting the research process with an action: making an artifact. This shift increases the likelihood the team finds insights mattering most to the organization.

Lack of Diversity

PrD is best facilitated with diverse teams, diverse not only in terms of roles but also in thinking styles. In the Creation Session, the more assumptions teams offer up, discuss, and build into artifacts, the better. If groupthink or social loafing minimizes the number of assumptions aired, the process will suffer. Moving through the quadrants of the concepts, solutions, discoveries, and frames is best facilitated with a diverse mix of Designers, Builders, Researchers, and Analysts. In Creation Sessions with lots of people, it may be necessary to divide individuals into groups, using techniques to ensure the various thinking styles are balanced across teams.

The Perils of PrD

PrD is an amazing risk reduction strategy, but it doesn’t apply in every situation. Successful PrD requires the right mix of talent: The internal team must be open to the process, and the process requires an effective facilitator. Further, the approach takes courage—airing our assumptions to external stakeholders with nothing more than cardboard, foam core, and glue is not for the faint of heart. Although PrD isn’t limited in how it can be applied, or to what type of project, it is most effective when the situation requires taking action first.

Introducing Presumptive Design

PrD is a research tool that places design thinking in service of innovation. Innovation, by definition, is fraught with risk. Regardless of the target of the innovation—a new product or service, a new market or business, or a new strategy—by its nature, innovation involves unknowns. For situations in which teams “don’t know what they don’t know,” a step-wise process will not reduce risk. PrD is an inexpensive, powerful means of reducing risk by rapidly and iteratively forming hypotheses, taking action, capturing and analyzing the results, and quickly offering insights about and tests of those hypotheses. Before we invest in any project, large or small, we engage in PrD: The cost/benefit is just too compelling not to.

PrD and an Agile Way of Business

PrD drives innovation; it informs business strategies; it is fundamentally an agile practice, and it brings User Experience to each of these efforts. Businesses face continuing pressures to innovate, to reach markets faster, and to improve their customers’ and users’ experiences, even as their competition does the same. This is especially true in software-driven enterprises, in which software development practices, such as agile, have moved into the boardroom, driving strategy. PrD, by rapidly moving through the design thinking cycle, offers business leaders a powerful method of informing strategy in a dynamic world.

The Creation Session

PrD depends on two fundamental activities: creating the artifact (in the Creation Session) and serving up the artifact (in an Engagement Session). In the Creation Session, internal teams make their assumptions manifest through the crafting of artifacts. Team members may not be familiar with sketching techniques; they may have never worked together before the session; they may not recognize their assumptions as assumptions. A successful Creation Session requires keen facilitation and attention to logistical details.