Deep Dive Research on Industrial Safety

Contextual Inquiry and Context of Use

The initial phase of this research was to understand more about Industrial Health and Safety concerns. The team spent three months out in the field gathering data and observations at oil refineries, waste water treatment plants, underground infrastructure construction and maintenance sites, and other factories with enclosed work spaces where sound pollution and air ventilation posed health risks to employees. Our observations were focused on a number of concerns, including what kinds of data were being collected about employee health, how that data was analyzed and used in policy decisions, and concerns from both management and staff about the ways this data was being collected in the field. We heard stories about safety violations due to inaccurate or infrequent sampling, ways in which subject matter experts were innovating with machine learning, and basic usability problems with existing measurement tooling. We learned about different types of users of these systems, ways in which companies were using manual calibration and checks-and-balances to try to keep employees compliant, and cases where these processes were easily subverted for a number of reasons.

One core issue we heard repeatedly was an issue with stale or inconsistent data transfer and inconsistent device usage of personal gas exposure badges worn by employees in dangerous environments. Subject matter experts explained how quickly some environments can turn from safe to hazardous and how delays in receiving analytics severely impact their ability to keep employees safe. Employees told us of concerns related to repeat false positives and concerns about how these extra steps were getting in the way of their productivity when working at these dangerous work sites.

Field research from multiple worksites was distilled into diagrams and storyboards illustrating how the work is done today and the pain points technicians and managers currently feel.

Concept Design for Wearable Badge

Based on our contextual inquiry, we learned of several basic usability concerns with existing technology as well as ways in which software improvements could alleviate employee concerns about compliance.

My partner Industrial Designer worked on ergonomic and physical issues regarding the size and positioning of Personal Gas exposure badges as well as how these badges docked at night for calibration, charging, and data transfer.

Partnering with the Industrial Designer on the physical constraints, I worked to design the firmware experience for how Employees can operate the physical badge. Two key aspects of this experience dealt with how the employee confirmed if the badge was assigned to them and the Alarm Sounds and related digital read-outs provide employees instructions for navigating a hazardous worksite.

The design work for this interface design included UI trees detailing how the navigation on the device worked, how Employees and Managers would set up the device, and how the Badge operated with the Dock in different calibration modes.

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Understanding the Device within an Internet-of-Things

Thinking deeper about the Management experience and the types of data science Subject Matter Experts wished they could engage with to push the envelope for Employee Health and Safety, I worked on concepts of a system of software interactions to understand how the devices could work together as an integrated monitoring system across larger sites such as an oil refinery.

Key parts of this experience that were heavily dependent on wireless data transfer included how the system behaved in critical events to warn both the Employee on site and the Manager monitoring a plant. There was also work done to understand what redundancies in data transfer and mesh connectivity between badges could help overcome significant signaling delays we learned about from Subject Matter Experts.

Looking beyond the day-to-day compliance, we also investigated how the trend data from personal gas exposure badges could be overlayed with GPS coordinates and sensor data about acoustics, wind, and climate control data to provide holistic pictures of Employee health for EHS Managers and Subject Matter Experts so that they might identify new correlations of risks. These data analysis tools began to think beyond emergency response needs and more towards preventative health measures.

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