The Fire Service College is responsible for providing leadership, management and advanced operational training courses for senior fire officers from the United Kingdom and foreign fire authorities. Their previous method of delivering and grading training had some significant resource and monetary overheads, so they were looking for a blended digital solution that would reduce these, whilst also considering varying technical knowledge, a large number of stakeholders and a resistance to change.
I worked with FSC to understand their business and existing processes on all levels. There are several user-types and I had comprehensive meetings with representatives from all parties to find out their roles and needs for the system, so that I could create a solution that worked for all parties. From this I created user stories and user journey maps.
The next step was designing the information architecture. This was a significant part of the design process as there are multiple stages to every aspect of the different user roles. I then designed a framework that would be underpinned by a learning management system. This involved knowledge of different types of integration that could be applied to the variety of systems that needed to share information (technical architecture). The result of this was an integration document that accompanied the design documentation.
From here I created prototypes to test with the various user types, which in turn led to interactive wireframes and mockups with in-depth functional descriptions which were used by the development team.
Since going live the programme has substantially cut paperwork, freed up time for trainers to focus on core activities, improved consistency of training and provide live analytics.