Civic Design: Alberta Wildfire App Redesign
Goal: Redesign the Alberta Wildfire app to give Albertans a quick and accessible way to reference information about wildfires.
Tools
Figma
Year
2025
Course
The Practice of Information Design
This was my capstone project for the final course of the Information Design program. Over the final semester, each student worked on a civic design project. My project is a solution to an issue in emergency response— redesigning the Alberta Wildfire app. When contemplating what to address with this project, I thought of the ever-worsening wildfires we experience yearly in Alberta, and how their effects impact people not just locally in Calgary, but across the province. In researching this topic, I noticed how difficult it is to find information about active wildfires, fire bans, wildfire preparedness, and steps to take in case of emergency. This information is scattered around various government and city websites, and the existing Alberta Wildfire app. My solution was to redesign the app to create a source of information that would allow all Albertans to easily access this critical information.
Design Process
Proposal & Research
After determining my focus for this project, I drafted a project proposal outlining the problem statement, goals for the final product, preliminary research, and my plan for producing the project.
User Testing
This is a comparison between the original Wildfire app and my redesign. It covers some of the changes made and additional features, and discusses how my redesign focuses on reducing information overload and decision fatigue, and increasing accessibility. View my case study document here!
The goal for the project was to combine all of the webpages I used for my research into one place.
Planning & Wireframes
After completing my initial research into the topic and gathering the resources I would need to complete the project, I looked at the existing Alberta Wildfire app to begin planning for my redesign. I started by listing the features, functionalities, and content I wanted my redesigned app to have and comparing it to the existing app. I made a user journey map to determine the layout for the pages in the app and where specific content should be. From there, I developed low-fidelity wireframes to visualize the layout and setup of each page. I used these as reference when designing the final prototype.
I tested my first prototype with 4 users by having them complete a series of tasks within the working prototype:
1. Use the app to report a wildfire using the “report on map” feature
2. In the app, locate information about wildfire safety relevant to your location
3. Use the app to access information about steps to take in an emergency situation
4. Using the map feature, turn on filters for active wildfires and advisories
I asked the testers to describe their experience with each task, and asked a few questions about their overall experience.
Overall, testers thought that the app was easy to navigate and useful, despite running into a few technical issues due to the incomplete nature of the prototype. Testers who were familiar with the existing Wildfire app noted that my prototype was already much more user friendly.
I used the results of the testing to make a few revisions to the prototype
Final Product:
The final product for this project was a fully developed working prototype of the redesigned Alberta Wildfire app.
