Everyday emergencies: Exploring challenges and designs involving 9-1-1 systems

This thesis explores everyday emergencies and looks at the challenges and opportunities that surround in designing and implementing Next Generation 9-1-1 systems. The thesis looks at two stakeholders of a 911 emergency call, call takers/supervisors and callers. It explores how callers and call takers will be affected with the potential introduction of video calls in emergency calling and how introduction of multimedia affects privacy of both callers and call takers. The thesis also looks at potential work from home scenarios for call takers, opportunities around designing user interfaces that enable such collaboration and challenges to privacy under such conditions. The thesis is divided in three stages which also reflect the order in which I carried out my research. The first stage involves designing and evaluating call taking user interfaces for Next Generation 9-1-1. The second stage involves building an innovative user interface that allows work from home call taking for callers and promotes remote collaboration over software between various stakeholders of emergency call centre. The final stage of my research involves building a next generation mobile application that allows 911 callers to use multimedia capabilities like photo sharing and video calls within a 911 call. The three stages of my research contribute valuable insights into the challenges around incorporating video in 911 calls and present various design considerations for future designers in this space. My research also highlights the potential threat to privacy for call takers who may be monitored by a supervisor with always on video cameras in future remote collaboration setups that promote work from home scenarios for 911 employees. The thesis highlights some limitations that constrains current design work and can act as a guide for future researchers in improving their designs, should they consider this area of research.