A government dispatch tool designed to route non-emergency calls away from 911 -- reducing burden on first responders while connecting residents to the right services faster. Built through direct field research with dispatchers and city officials in Orange County.
Project Details
- Client: Orange County
- Role: UX Designer
- Scope: Field research, information architecture, interaction design
- Type: Government / Public Service
The Challenge
911 systems were absorbing a high volume of calls that were not life-threatening emergencies. Dispatchers spent significant time routing callers to non-emergency services -- social services, code enforcement, city departments -- work that pulled attention and cognitive capacity away from actual emergencies. Orange County needed a smarter way to triage incoming calls so that dispatchers could route non-emergency cases efficiently without losing case context or creating gaps in the service chain.
The Strategy
The team started in the field, not at the whiteboard. Observational studies and structured interviews with dispatchers and city officials surfaced the real workflow: the workarounds, the mental models built from years of experience, and the moments where the existing process created stress or risk. The design mandate that came out of that research: mirror how dispatchers already think, reduce the decisions they have to make under pressure, and make every case trackable without adding administrative overhead to an already demanding job.
The Execution
Information architecture and interaction flows were built around the dispatcher's triage process rather than around the city's organizational chart. Iterative prototyping allowed the team to test routing logic against real dispatcher mental models and refine until the navigation matched trained instinct rather than learned software behavior.
Forms standardized the information gathering that had previously relied on dispatcher memory and informal notes -- while a custom notes field preserved the case nuance that structured fields alone cannot capture. The interface was designed to minimize cognitive load at the highest-stress moments: clear case status, logical routing paths, and consistent interaction patterns across all case types.
The Results
The project produced a dispatcher-first tool with a validated interaction model built on real field research. The design addressed the failure mode common to most institutional software: systems shaped around bureaucratic structure rather than the people using them under pressure. OC Navigator's routing logic and information architecture were defined by the dispatchers it was built to serve.