Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Article Idea:

Personas, Ethnographic Research and Participatory Design with Hurricane Katrina Survivors

suggested by Catherine Forsman on 2006/10/22

I would like to submit an article regarding user research findings of survivors’ needs and disaster response post Hurricane Katrina. This article will cover the user population studied showing personas, scenarios and participatory design sketches for information structure needs, technology needs, and physical structural needs.

As a brief introduction, I have worked as a information architect, user researcher, human factors engineer for the last 10 years. After Hurricane Katrina I believed it was time for me to use some of the things I had learned in my profession to do something after this disaster. So I went to do field research (full ethnographies, contextual inquiry and participatory design) sporadically over the last year in New Orleans, Bay St. Louis and Slidell. On a hunch, I felt I understood the power of user research and interaction design in understanding a popluation’s needs for an information system, why not see if it applied for disaster response and that personas, scenarios and ethnographic research findings could help in some way to inform and consolidate some of the needs into a type of concrete set of needs for certain populations.

I am happy to say that this little experiment from this research range from practical information needs to suggestions for better ways to deploy technology after a disaster, from sensors, to handheld devices, to cheaper satellite dishes, to how shelters and FEMA trailer parks need to be restructured in order to take into account human needs.

This article would be a type of “proof of concept” for what user experience research could be used for a in a post Katrina situation.