Carbon

An operating system that accelerates the decision making of law enforcement by augmenting complex tasks with decision autonomy.

Role

Forward Deployed Designer

Timeline

Jul 2023 - Aug 2024

Skills

User research, Product design

Problem
BBC: At least 125 dead in football stadium crush

We interviewed and observed 4 commanders and 45 SWAT officers to see how they managed large events.

* 2022 soccer match with 125 dead and 300 injured

Problem #1 / Too Much Info.

Commanders are bombarded with information from everywhere, making it difficult to assess what's actually happening.

Problem #2 / Poor Resource Allocation

People are sent to the wrong areas at the wrong time, leading to poorly equipped personnel getting injured and killed or heavily equipped personnel unnecessarily agitating the crowd.

Out of respect to the users, further operational details will not be discussed.

Solution
Provide a digestible way to understand what's happening everywhere, every time.

During a large event, everything happens everywhere all at once, meaning we need to display data in a digestible format.

Feature # 1 / Decision Autonomy

Big picture map view where commanders can see where officers are and understand what each squadron faces.

Feature # 2 / Prioritizing what you see

"Granular picture view," to synthesize the many unfolding events.

Feature # 3 / Replay and Learn

Carbon provides a report and video replay for officers to learn from their actions. Now officers can learn from recordings rather than only simulations.

Due to sensitivity reasons, the Replay Map view and additional features will not be covered. That said, feel free to check out the Augment website, where you can also find more details about our drone software.

Reflection
Demos are 10x Interviews

User interviews can only get you so far. Pick one hypothesis, build a prototype fast, and demo it for feedback.

* Nov 2023, one of our many demos viewing a running event at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium

Fail Fast, Learn Quickly

When you see how users use the product, you get a better understanding of how they really think and behave. We ship every 2 weeks (sometimes everyday).

This continuous iteration cycle gets you closer to the polished product every time.

Iterating for New Processes

In fact, new processes emerged around our product as they never worked with something like it before. Prototypes are crucial since it's impossible to predict new behavior from interviews.

Instacart Recipes

Redesigning Recipes (KP Design Fellow Finalist)