Fire and Emergency
New Zealand

Fire and Emergency New Zealand

Saving lives with design

Following the devastating earthquake that hit Christchurch in 2012, resulting in the
loss of 185 lives, the Fire Service undertook a frank review of operating practices.
This highlighted a number of key areas where improvements could be made to
how it manages emergency incidents.

NV Interactive
UX / Design / Digital Transformation

Team –
Chris Barneau / Creative Direction
Riaan Botha / UX Research

In collaboration with the Fire Service Dev team (Fire Service put together a dev team temporarily hosted in small house behind the Upper Hutt active Fire Station for that project)

Incident control and speed optimisation

Incidents managed by Fire & Emergency NZ are very fluid. One of the key factors driving safety is the accuracy of information that supports situational awareness. Often the information the response team received was outdated as the situation had changed since dispatched from the station. Updates were handled verbally on the ground or via radio, in often challenging and dangerous situations.

This insight gave birth to the Mobile Response App (MRA), a cross-platform mobile application running on Windows, iOS & Android powered 10-12 inch tablet devices.

Delivered as a true collaboration between FENZ, NV and Intergen, the MRA project is a triumph of design led thinking delivering real world results.

Embracing people before technology is one of the key lessons learnt during the research, discovery & pilot phase. The successful path to the MRA pilot can be attributed to a combination of people, culture & getting everyone on-board, including the business & most importantly the frontline firefighters themselves.

A perfect outcome of design-led thinking.

Embracing people before technology is one of the key lessons learnt during the research, discovery & pilot phase.

The successful path to the MRA pilot can be attributed to a combination of people, culture & getting everyone on-board, including the business & most importantly the frontline firefighters themselves.

A perfect outcome of design-led thinking.