Take the Pledge

This is an educational project carried out as part of my Human Computer Interaction course at Sheridan College. It is a website for the Burlington Fire Department for their 'Take the Pledge' Campaign.

The Problem

The Burlington Fire Department was in need of a solution that allows them to spend the least amount of their time possible travelling to houses to educate and remind residents of their fire safety plan.

The Solution

A application which provides a way for Burlington residents to take a pledge ensuring their smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are present and up to date. At the same time allowing employees of the Burlington Fire Department to use this information to track number of houses that have taken the pledge.

Role

My role in the project was to design a website that can facilitate the requirements made.
- First, allowing the residents of the Burlington area to take the pledge and keep up to date with news about the Burlington Fire Department.
- Second, the website should allow the Burlington Fire Department employees view this data using some sort of mapping feature.

Identifying our users

After discussing with the associated employee at the Burlington Fire Department, it was discussed the website will predominately be viewed by residents in the Burlington area and be monitor by the fire department employees.

Implementation

We were given complete authority on the design of the website and the technologies used. I took the decision of using the colour palette from the Burlington logo, to make the website feel part of the official Burlington website allowing for a more cohesive experience.

Final Designs

Since this project was part of my college course and it was under a strict time constraint. I decided to continue the design directly into high-fidelity as I felt I had a good gasp as to what the website should look like and what kind of content will be placed in it.

Note: It was decided at the time of planning that the website will be part of the official area of Burlington website.

The Pledge

The content of the ‘Take the Pledge’ form were discussed with the Burlington Fire Department employees. A point to be made about the form is that the form does not have to completely filled as not everyone is a house owner. The users can provide the information they feel most comfortable giving out.

The Other Side

Since we had established that the website will used by two very separate users and our approach consist of having a single website that can do everything. We decided upon implementing a login where employees can login their credentials and view data about the pledges.

Dashboard

The dashboard consists of a mapping feature for viewing the pledges where each pin represents the different individuals who have taken the pledge and since the form can be completely or partially filled, the colour of the pins help differentiate.

The Burlington Fire Department employees can filter through the pledges based on the selected filter option and click on the individual's pins or addresses to view specifically what that household has filled out in the form.

Meeting our goals

As this was first and fore most a final project for our college Human Computer Interaction course, the team was able to meet the requirements successfully. On the other hand, the project did not move forward with the Burlington Fire Department.

Learnings

The project did teach what kind of work is involved in designing a product for an organization and the process that goes into it.