Designing Emergency Response Dispatch Systems for Better Dispatcher Performance

Abstract

Ping Zhang was the accepting Senior Editor. This article was submitted on 4/20/2010 and accepted on 2/12/2011. It was with the authors 230 days for 2 revisions. Emergency response systems are a relatively new and important area of research in the information systems community. While there is a growing body of literature in this research stream, human-computer interaction (HCI) issues concerning the design of emergency response system interfaces have received limited attention. Emergency responders often work in time pressured situations and depend on fast access to key information. One of the problems studied in HCI research is the design of interfaces to improve user information selection and processing performance. Based on cue-summation theory and research findings on parallel processing, associative processing, and hemispheric differences in information processing, this study proposes that information selection of target information in an emergency response dispatch application can be improved by using supplementary cues. Color-coding and sorting are proposed as relevant cues that can improve processing performance by providing prioritization heuristics. An experimental emergency response dispatch application is developed, and user performance is tested under conditions of varying complexity and time pressure. The results suggest that supplementary cues significantly improve performance, with better results often obtained when both cues are used. Additionally, the use of these cues becomes more beneficial as time pressure and task complexity increase.

Complacency and Intentionality in IT Use and Continuance

“…Providing supplementary cues (i.e., heuristics) to emergency response dispatchers improved dispatchers' information selections and processing performance while decreasing their response time (McNab et al, 2011). Further, these cues were observed to be more beneficial under increased time pressure and task complexity.…”

“…Such training is particularly important for studies in which participants repeat a task (e.g., McNab et al, 2011;Shaft & Vessey, 1995) to prevent potential confounds with the learning effects associated with repeated use. Therefore, we walked each participant through a practice stock purchase decision.…”

“…Organizations derive significant benefit from deploying computerized decision aids to support employee decision making (e.g., McNab, Hess, & Valacich, 2011). However, along with these benefits can come drawbacks that undermine the sizeable investments firms make in such decision support systems.…”

From technology to activity development

“…It is common to solve this problem by using students as representatives of the potential real-world professionals of the work practice in question (e.g. Barrier & Davis, 1993;Mathiassen, Seewaldt, & Stage, 1995;McNab, Hess, & Valacich, 2009). However, Ives, Olson, and Baroudi (1983), for example, have argued that the validity of the results in realistic settings might be questionable when using students as surrogates for measuring user satisfaction of management information systems.…”

Establishing Best Practices for Scholarly Research Based on the Tenets of Human-Computer Interaction

“…Rather, research positioned within Interaction1 is bound by specifically defined task(s) and context(s). An example of such research comes from McNab et al (2009), who studied the design of emergency response systems (ERS) and the resultant human performance. They conducted an experiment "to compare information selection speed and performance with the ERS when supplementary cues are used in contexts of varying complexity and time pressure" (p. 2).…”