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After a natural disaster, many are left without a mode of communication. Additionally, resources are not evenly distributed to those who need them the most. Using the greater Savannah area as our testing ground, we embarked on a 20 week journey to help solve some of the most complex challenges in natural disaster recovery. How might we reach every person in a post-disaster scenario?
Libelle is a a piece of natural disaster resilience infrastructure that would be deployed within communities to help them communicate with each other through an integrated mesh network and find up-to-date information regarding the disaster and recovery process. By implementing Libelle, we can aid those affected by the natural disaster by helping them to rebuild, recover, and reconnect.
We launched our research phase around two key areas: Awareness and Behavior. We wanted to:
1. Better understand how aware people of vulnerable populations are when it comes to the protocols of facing a natural disaster.
2. Better understand how these people act when facing a natural disaster and how do their behaviors differ from those who were prepared beforehand.
To understand these questions, we conducted both behavioral and attitudinal studies to get a clearer understanding of how these people think and behave.
Questionnaire: 324 responses
In-Depth Interviews: 6 participants
Digital Ethnography: 12 primary data points
Contextual Inquiry: 2 participants
Cognitive Mapping: 9 participants
Digital Ethnography: >100 secondary data points.
This illustrates the four categories we classified as our user, based on 3 months of primary and secondary research.
We chose to target the two most common categories: the Latecomer and the Early Planner.
Individual preparedness is not inside everyone, especially for the inexperienced.
Reliance on communities and local governments is both inevitable and needed.
Community preparedness and recovery requires a sense of safety.
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Once we had a clear idea of who we are designing for, and what we want to design, we began to develop our final product, Libelle. Due to the size and resources, we began with drawings and several 3D models to understand the form and functionality required to address the needs of our user base. For our application, we began with low fidelity drawings.
After 20+ weeks of hard work, it was finally time to deliver our final design to the class. Libelle is a piece of physical infrastructure marketed toward municipalities to help aid in disaster resilience. With Libelle, citizens and government workers are able to gain up-to-date information regarding the area affected. For citizens, they are able to gain directions to the nearest points of relief as well as communicate with loved ones through Libelle's integrated mesh network. For government workers, they are able to view the areas most affected through crowd sourced information and send relief to the areas most in need.
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At the time of its completion, this project was the longest and most ambitious project I had been apart of. We had many late nights thinking about the concept and developing our idea which made us lack momentum in the end. The most fulfilling part of this project was finally seeing our renders and interfaces come to life. One takeaway from this project: To be a team player, means to be accountable and dependable. Throughout the course of this project, we had many difficulties with interpersonal relationships within the team. This left some members feeling underrecognized and as if their work didn't matter. I recognized that in order to deliver the quality project we were capable of, there needed to be a better team atmosphere. I took it upon myself to speak with each team member to better understand their needs and find a way we could all work better as a team. In the end, it's important to take a step back and observe the scope of our actions to better align with team goals, personal goals, and the overlap between the two.
"Life is so short, you cant waste even a day subscribing to what someone thinks you can do, versus knowing what you can do."- Virgil Abloh