Revive - Graduate Capstone Project
Revive is an iOS app that connects students, visitors, faculty, and staff to defibrillators on UGA’s campus. Together, our team worked to create a tool that would help increase the chance of survival in heart-related emergencies and provide peace of mind to those who may need a defibrillator or use one on a victim. We want to help those at the University of Georgia look out for themselves and for each other.
Role
Team UI Developer and Designer
Goal
Decrease the amount of deaths due to heart-related emergencies by minimizing the amount of time it takes to reach an AED.
From Sprint to Capstone
Pitching the Project
Revive was born out of a sprint process done a few months before the capstone project was pitched. We made the decision to expand on the idea and create a stand alone iOS app and watchOS app with features that give helpful instructions for defibrillator use during emergency and non-emergency situations, a map view with locations of defibrillators and helpful information to locate AEDs throughout campus, and the ability to add emergency contacts and send an emergency message if needed in an irregular heart rate, cardiac arrest, or heart failure emergency. By helping users get to defibrillators quickly and providing helpful instructions for the next steps, Revive will help UGA faculty, staff, students, & visitors feel more at ease knowing that they have a tool that will help them and others in case of an emergency.
Problem Statement
A new study found that people are more likely to survive a cardiac arrest if a bystander uses a defibrillator while waiting for emergency medical services to arrive…The analysis suggests that 1,700 additional lives were saved each year in the U.S. from bystander use of defibrillators.
The problem of reaching a defibrillator quickly still existed and we wanted to expand on this, but minimize the scope to those on the University of Georgia campus. As of the fall 2021 semester, there are about 40,000 students that attend the University of Georgia. The number of people on campus increases significantly when faculty, staff, and visitors are included in this number. We felt that it was necessary to create a tool that everyone could be able to use during an emergency or non-emergency situation no matter what their status is on campus.
Competitor Research
During our research, we looked at different competitors that had similar features as those we wanted to include in Revive. Throughout these different competitor apps, we took away various inspirations that we wanted to look at when developing and designing Revive. Also, we listed some cons that we saw throughout these apps so that we could address within our app and improve upon.
Features
Revive will be formatted as an iOS app with a watchOS component. We chose to create an iOS app solely because of the ability of the app to work alongside the watchOS app. The Apple Watch has the ability to monitor users heart rates therefore, we saw an opportunity to expand on that with including an Apple watch component. The mobile phone app will be there to provide more information and details for users on a bigger screen if needed, but also users will have the option to connect their Apple Watch in order to provide simplified instructions and buzzer ques to help in the locating of AED’s in an emergency situation and also provide the necessary emergency notifications.
Consumer Research
Our target market consists of UGA students, faculty, staff, and visitors of all genders and races. The target market we are interested in preferably monitor their heart rate using their Apple Watch and iPhone and/or want to feel better prepared in case of an emergency they experience themselves or as a bystander on UGA’s campus. The target market age ranges from 18-65 and either living in Athens, GA or visiting. The age range is wide since this app is designed to be helpful for all, even if they themselves are not experiencing heart issues but are able to help as a bystander.
Revive Alpha
Goal
to be simple, direct, and easy to use for users and designed in a way that is efficient, informative, and helpful.
iOS App Summary
The iOS alpha app featured only the opening screen of the app which was the map view with a few AED locations indicated with the Revive paw print logo. The bottom toolbar was also laid out included a home, contact, instruction, and help page tab. Our goal moving forward was to add a map toolbar, continue to design the AED location view and toolbar views, and work on connecting notifications to the watchOS app.
WatchOS App Summary
At this point in the process, we wanted to continue to look at the addition of a watchOS app and what the user flow would look like when using it with the iOS app. The watchOS app would primarily be useful with notifications noting users if they were near an AED and giving directions to and from an AED location in the event of an emergency.
From Alpha to Beta
Throughout our development process, we made a few changes, the biggest one being temporarily pausing the watchOS app development. We felt it was important to get user feedback on the iOS app and see if users felt it was necessary to include this added feature or if they could see widgets or Siri shortcuts being more useful in addition to the iOS app.
Revive Beta
Goal #1: Efficiency
Providing our users with a simplistic, efficient app that is useful in emergency situations.
Goal #2: Informative
Providing our users with an app that educates to increase confidence in bystanders of an emergency.
Testing the Beta
Throughout the testing process our goal was to test 10 people ranging from students, faculty, and staff on the UGA campus. Our testers ranged from different ages and occupations which gave us a wide range of feedback to improve upon our app.
Hypothesis
Providing a map with detailed information and location of AEDs on the University of Georgia’s campus, directions to and from those locations, and phone call and emergency messaging abilities for students, faculty, staff, and visitors on the UGA campus will decrease the response time in an emergency.
Research Goals
Increase confidence and comfort in bystanders when responding in an emergency situation.
Provide features that give users a useful resource that educates and aids before and during an emergency.
Decrease the amount of time it takes to respond in an emergency and locate an AED on the UGA campus.
Testing Findings
When we were first thinking about designing an app that could be easily usable for everyone, we knew we would need to target a wide range of ages so we focused on testing an age range of 18-75. W began testing those in this age range who typically find themselves on campus such as students, faculty, and staff. Overall, our testing calculations showed that Revive fell in the above average range for usability according to usability.gov., with an Average System Usability Scale Score of 89.5. Also, through surveys, 68% of testers felt that Revive would be useful in an emergency situation, and the average pass or fail task success rate was 76%.
Feedback
Improvements
We took the feedback from testing and made some improvements in the app. Some of the improvements we focused on were imagery consistency in order to make the images we used of the AED’s on our instruction page feature the actual AED’s used on campus and making the icons smaller and more clear on our map.
Imagery Consistency
Icon Sizing
Future of Revive
We believe the future of Revive looks very bright, and we only want to make it more efficient and user friendly. Some different technologies that we have discussed moving forward are the possibility of adding a Revive widget, or even adding a Siri shortcut that would help create an even faster response time during an emergency.
Revive is all about helping others, and we could see it expanding to other college campuses, corporate offices, or even through communities (for example: the Downtown Athens area) in the future to help more and more people become prepared and potentially save lives.