Briefs
Redesigning the building-profile tool university emergency dispatchers rely on mid-call.
This work involves an active public-safety environment. Everything here stays at the workflow level — screens are recreations, and no operational data appears.
Role
UX Research · Product Design · Information Architecture · AI-Assisted Product Development
Timeline
Summer 2026
Organization
University of Michigan Division of Public Safety & Security
Tools
Figma — auto layout, variants, iterative prototyping
The short version
Dispatchers coordinating emergency response used a building-lookup workflow so broken they worked around it entirely.
I ran contextual inquiry inside the dispatch center, documented how information moves across a 7-screen workstation and 10+ simultaneous tools, and redesigned BRIEFS around a tabbed information architecture with a sticky critical-information strip — so the details that matter mid-call never scroll away. The redesign now exists as an interactive prototype with a PRD the department is building against.
7
Screens per dispatcher workstation
10+
Simultaneous tools in live workflows
5
Fixed profile tabs in the redesign
Quick facts
Role: UX Research, Product Design, Information Architecture, Rapid Prototyping, AI-Assisted Development
Methods: Stakeholder interviews, workflow mapping, requirements synthesis, IA, iterative prototyping, usability feedback
Deliverables: Operational workflow, case management platform, request intake, command center, linked entities, design system, responsive UI
The cost of a buried answer.
When someone calls campus dispatch about a building — an alarm, a threat, a medical emergency — the dispatcher needs that building's critical details in seconds: access points, hazards, contacts. BRIEFS is the tool that holds them. When the lookup fails or buries the answer, the cost isn't a bad session metric; it's a slower response to a real emergency. That's the bar every design decision had to clear.
Understanding the work
I ran contextual inquiry inside the dispatch center, watching dispatchers handle live workflows across a 7-screen workstation running 10+ simultaneous tools. Three findings drove everything after.
Rather than jumping directly into interface design, I documented how information moved from the moment a request was submitted until findings were delivered. One insight changed the project: analysts spent only a few minutes receiving a request—but days managing the investigation that followed.
Before: “How can we make requests easier to submit?”
After: “How can we make investigations easier to manage?”
Workflow map / research synthesis
The research artifact matters because it explains why the case study pivots from intake UI to the operational model behind the work.
01
The lookup had been abandoned
Dispatchers had built personal workarounds because getting to a building's critical information through BRIEFS took too long under pressure. The tool designed for the emergency was being routed around during the emergency.
02
Critical information scrolled away
The profile was one long scrolling card layout. Access, hazards, and contacts lived at unpredictable depths depending on how much data a building had. Data-rich buildings buried the important parts; sparse ones looked broken.
03
Everything looked like an alarm, so nothing did
Warning iconography appeared on nearly every card whether or not anything was wrong. In an environment saturated with real alerts, decorative hazard icons trained dispatchers to ignore exactly the visual language that should mean "act now."
The redesign
From one long scroll to a tabbed, sticky-first layout.
The redesign reorganizes the building profile around a tabbed information architecture with a sticky critical-information strip, so the details that matter mid-call — access, hazards, contacts — never scroll away. The new profile settles into 5 fixed tabs, replacing the unpredictable depth of the old scrolling card layout.
Where it stands
An interactive prototype, with a PRD the department is building against.
This redesign exists today as an interactive prototype. The department is building against the accompanying PRD, so I'm not claiming deployment outcomes ahead of that work — the honest status is prototype plus PRD, not shipped software.