A human-centered design approach: design a new evacuation alarm system for building fire emergency considering the influence of pre-emergency activity

Abstract

This study combined the Human-centered design (HCD) approach with the immersive VR techniques to design and evaluate a new evacuation alarm system with improved warning efficiency for building emergency evacuation, considering the negative influence of pre-emergency activity. Four main HCD design activities were performed, the context-of-use, user requirements were defined through a theoretical perspective, technology-based solution research, expert group meeting, and focus group were used to produce the final concept. A smart phone-based evacuation alarm system concept, consisting of a control center and a smartphone-based user interface, featuring warning redundancy and multimodality was proposed. A developed virtual environment (VE) was used to evaluate and refine the final design in an iteration manner. This study widened the application of the HCD approach by using alternative simulator methods for evaluation, and added a step for the validation of VR as an adequate tool for designing and evaluating products.

Keywords:

• Building emergency evacuation
• evacuation alarm design
• human interaction
• UI design
• human-centered design
• virtual reality

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ms. Xinyi Li (Assistant to Chairman) from Sinocare Inc. (Changsha, China), for providing volunteers and experiment space.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

China Government Scholarship 201906130192 CIAUD UID/EAT/4008/2020LARSyS-FCT Plurianual fundings 2020–2023 UIDB/50009/2020

Notes on contributors

Zihao Wang

Zihao Wang is a lecturer at the China Academy of Art and is currently pursuing a co-tutelle Ph.D. in design at Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and Hunan University, China. He received his B.A. and M.F.A. degrees in industrial design from Jiangnan University (China) in 2013, and Umeå University (Sweden) in 2016, respectively. He has been an effective researcher at the ErgoUX Lab. His main research areas are the study of product design within extreme environments using virtual environments, usability, and user experience. Zihao’s awards and honors include the two-time China National Scholarship (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China) and more than 17 design awards, such as the Core 77 Design Award, Red Dot Design Award and iF Concept Design Award.

Renke He

Francisco Rebelo is Associated Professor at University of Lisbon, Director of the ergoUX and coordinator of the research Ergonomics group in CIAUD (Interdisciplinary Center for Studies in Architecture, Urbanism and Design) and collaborator research at ITI/LarSyS – Interactive Technology Institute. His activity of teacher and research is focused on Human Centred Design, usability and user experience. He published more than 200 articles, book chapters and is editor and co-editor of 10 books.

Francisco Rebelo

Renke He studied civil engineering and architecture at Hunan University in China. He was a visiting scholar at Industrial Design Department of Royal Danish Academy from 1987 to 1988 (Copenhagen), and at School of Design of North Carolina State University from 1998 to 1999 (U. S.). Renke He is professor of the School of Design, at Hunan University and is also director of the Chinese Industrial Design Education Committee. Currently, he holds the position of vice chair of the China Industrial Design Association.

Elisângela Vilar

Elisângela Vilar is architect with post-graduation in Ergonomics (2002) from the UFPE - Brazil, Ph.D. degree in Ergonomics (2012), and Post-doc. in Ergonomics in Design (2019), both from ULisboa - Portugal. Since 2019 she has been an Auxiliary Researcher at the Faculty of Architecture – ULisboa, and effective researcher at CIAUD in the ErgoUX Lab and collaborator research at ITI/LarSys. Her main research areas are the study of Human interactions with built environments and complex systems using virtual environments, usability and user experience.

Paulo Noriega

Paulo Noriega is a Social and Organizational Psychologist, with a MSc in Human engineering and a Ph.D. in Ergonomics. He is an effective researcher at CIAUD in the ErgoUX Lab. He is also collaborator researcher at ITI/LarSyS. He is Assistant Professor in Faculty of Architecture – Ulisboa, Portugal, and is responsible by the curricular units of Cognitive Ergonomics, Emotional Design and Neurosciences Applied to Design. He published more than 100 articles, book chapters.

Jiayu Zeng

Jiayu Zeng is pursuing a co-tutelle Ph.D. in design at the University of Lisbon in Portugal and Hunan University in China. She received a bachelor’s degree in design and a master’s degree in industrial design engineering from Jiangnan University (China) in 2014 and 2017, respectively, and exchanged studies in communication design at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, in 2015. Awards and honors include one time China National Scholarship (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China), one time China Jiangsu Province Overseas Study Scholarship, five design patents, one experimental design patent, and more than ten design awards, such as Red Dot Design Award, Innonatives Design Award, etc.