Date of Award

5-2015

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Computer Science

Committee Chair(s)

Amanda Lee Hughes

Committee

Amanda Lee Hughes

Committee

Curtis Dyreson

Committee

Tung Nguyen

Abstract

For this project, I designed, developed, and evaluated an application called the Crisis Social Media Trainer (CSMT) which helps emergency responders practice using social media. This application simulates the social media activity that one might encounter during a crisis event. I began by iteratively designing and prototyping the CSMT application. After I created a stable prototype, I evaluated it. First, I performed cognitive walkthroughs and heuristic analyses on the prototype. After making improvements based on the results of the walkthroughs and analyses, I tested the prototype with four emergency responders. This user testing revealed many areas of improvement for the application and demonstrated that CSMT could be a useful social media training tool for emergency responders. Finally, I modified the CSMT prototype to address the issues encountered by the users during testing.

Share

COinS