Hackathons

Reducing response time to emergency vehicles in ATL traffic

I took part in the Atlanta Civic Coding Competition with AT&T,  City of Atlanta and Code for America to design an application that utilizes data from the "City IQ" sensors installed in street lights within the city. Data included traffic data, parking availability, air quality, weather emergencies and even gun shot identification.

The problem my team and I explored was traffic and it's response to emergency vehicles within the city. The solution we came up with was called eva (Emergency Vehicle Assistance).

We pitched our solution and won second place (out of 92 contestants) and won $15,000 [News Article]

Discovering

Though the amount of accidents involving emergency vehicles were considerably low, the impact it has on the repair for the city was substantially high. We knew that while the city's public transport wasn't as effective with train lines running east to west and north to south and bus lines connecting within these limits but going only as far as metro Atlanta due to political differencees. This led to most people in Atlanta owning/leasing a car leading to be named as one of US's cities with the highest traffic.

Some of our initial research from publicly available data gave us an idea of the potential value and reach.  

We asked users what they thought the main reason was for not reacting to emergency vehicles on time. From those interviews, we narrowed distraction, unawareness and confusion as the primary reasons.

Defining

This helped our team to define the following high-level goals for eva:

"Save overall time needed to respond to an emergency vehicle by each driver in the emergency vehicle's path through an interface for the commuter."

"Reduce collisions involving emergency vehicles due to right of way not being granted."

Solutioning

Personas & Storyboarding

By storyboarding, we were able to brainstorm solutions to help the responder persona save time and at the same time help the commuter persona react in a timely and confident manner. 

This helped us shape certain design pillars such as timely and instructive notifications for commuters while for responders, our solution had to be actionable and clarifying.

Commuter Application

Explorations

Since most of the commuters had their smartphones on them while using a map app or a music app, we designed the notification to be timely and instructive to alleviate confusion and distraction and improve awareness. The instructions were designed to be short and effective that were played out for various   scenarios.  

Responder Application

Explorations

Through research we found out that at least two people responded to an emergency. This made it easy for us to design the app for the passenger responder. The responder app consists of a map and a right panel.

The map helped the user click on sensors in the path selected as well as suggested paths to make a better judgment on which path to select. Clicking on a sensor node displayed live video feed on the right panel to help the responder make an informed decision.

eva Framework

The commuter and responder app along with CityIQ data and the AT&T sensors make the eva framework.

Eva was designed to tackle current and future traffic issues.
The product can be integrated with traffic lights to clear traffic way ahead of time, integrated with self driving cars to go beyond just sensing.

And grow an ecosystem to build a smarter city

eva Demo

In this demo, when a commuter is detected in the path of a responder (responding to an emergency using the eva tablet app), the commuter receives a notification prompting him/her to form a corridor (other notifications include move right because of oncoming vehicle, move right because of vehicle coming from behind and stop)

Concluding Thoughts

This project taught me how to timebox the design and development of a feature, gave me confidence in my presentation skills and to have fun along the way.  I realized that telling a compelling story that people could relate to had the best chance for your idea to be heard. Winning second prize was a sweet ending.