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Rich McNabb

• Written by Rich McNabb • Proofread & Edited by Claude AI

Notes and ideas / Career (UX/UI)

Victoria University: Designing a police dispatch dashboard

Whenever I meet people about new roles, they ask me to explain my process. This university paper is where I first properly wrote it down, a week-by-week UX breakdown designing a police dispatch dashboard from brief to prototype.

Night perspective looking through the glowing blue geometric steel arches of the High Trestle Trail Bridge, showcasing modern architectural lighting and linear perspective.

User Experience paper at Victoria University

I completed a User Experience paper at Victoria University. Whenever I meet with people about new roles they always ask me to explain my process. My process changes based on the project and new ideas I want to try. Here’s the process I followed to complete the paper.

Week 1: Reading and note taking

  1. Read the course recommended text books:
    1. UX Book (I don’t recommend this book, it is extremely dull and hard to extract information from)
    2. Universal Principles of Design (useful design advice)
    3. I prefer Don Norman’s Design Of Everyday Things. It’s extremely thought-provoking and easily one of my Top 5 books of all time 🙂
  2. Read through the course assignment (in this case, design a Police Dispatch system), made notes and rough sketches.
The Design of Everyday Things

Week 2: User personas

  1. Arranged to visit (e.g. contextual inquiry) at the Police Head Office in Wellington, New Zealand
  2. Made a list of questions to ask the Police Dispatch Officer and emailed them to her ahead of time so she had a better understanding of the visit
  3. Sketched out some rough ideas for a persona template
  4. Finalised the text, colour and layout for the primary and secondary personas
Hand-drawn paper wireframe sketch mapping out the visual layout and section hierarchy for user persona profiles.
Primary persona profile for Dispatch Operator Recruit Kevin Hart outlining user goals, gaming-inspired behaviours, UI requirements, and restrictions.
Secondary persona profile card for Quality Assurance Analyst Sarah Rafferty detailing user goals, analytical behaviours, and UI requirements.

Week 3: Contextual inquiries, wireframes and mind maps

  1. Made notes based on my visit to the Police Head Office
  2. Created a mind map using MindMeister to gather and organise all my ideas
  3. Sketched out ideas for the rough wireframes and detailed what UI elements are required within the interface
  4. Completed some workshops on how to use Evolus Pencil a low-fidelity wireframe tool
  5. Designed a simple sign-in screen
  6. Interviewed a Police constable about the call handling process from their end
Detailed mind map outlining platform feature requirements across logging, jobs, units, navigation, and system layout.
Hand-drawn paper sketch mapping structural layout options, colour schemes, and input fields for a sign-in screen.
High-fidelity sign-in screen featuring a user profile avatar over a dark city skyline background.

Week 4: Sketching rough concepts and low-fidelity wireframes

  1. Sketching and wireframing of 2 x concepts
  2. Re-wrote the design brief into a user-requirement spreadsheet ensure elements don’t get over looked
Google Sheets document tracking police dispatch feature requirements, proposed UI solutions, and completion statuses.
Basic wireframe dashboard structure displaying active jobs table, unit status filters, and active call duration toolbar.
Wireframe interface layout for logging a new job, featuring incident input fields, a police unit map, and a active call soundwave bar.

Week 5: Design and prototyping

  1. Finished the two wireframe concepts
  2. Completed some workshops to better understand affordances
  3. Designed a logo, the navigation and grid structure
  4. Studied for the test and made notes
  5. Various iteration on the design of the dashboard.
Top navigation bar set against a blank 12-column responsive layout grid background for UI alignment planning.
Initial dashboard interface concept presenting active jobs with priority badges, assignment codes, and a bottom audio waveform bar.
Early dashboard prototype displaying an active jobs table alongside an overhead satellite map view of Upper Hutt.
Main dispatch dashboard displaying active police jobs sorted by priority, weather forecast, unit status metrics, and an interactive GIS map.
Job intake form interface featuring caller details, priority tags, and location mapping paired with a real-time call duration waveform banner.

Week 6: Study and design

  1. Went through the course book again and made study notes.
  2. Found some time to work on the camera screens
Camera view screen displaying a small thumbnail grid of regional CCTV feeds across Greater Wellington and Waikato Region.
Pop-up modal displaying a high-definition live video stream of Ohaupo Road (South) traffic camera feed.

Week 7: Design and prototype

  1. Take a look at the dedicated Jobs and Units page
  2. Completed some workshops on how to use the prototyping tool, Justinmind
Emergency dispatch dashboard displaying unit status list alongside a GIS map showing vehicle locations across Oriental Bay and Mount Victoria.
Units management screen featuring searchable unit categories and status filters alongside a GIS tracking map.

Week 8: Iterative design and prototyping

  1. Re-visited the new job page and completed the various interactions and alerts
  2. Built a prototype to view test out the navigation and user flows
Incident detail interface showing active call audio waveforms, caller metadata, and an interactive GIS map displaying an alert for 8 related jobs in the area.
Interactive Justinmind prototyping workspace displaying an active jobs table with an overlaid notification menu.

Week 9: User evaluation and fine-tuning

  1. Created a user-evaluation form using Google Form to gain insight and to use to improve the finished product.
  2. Experimented with a light and dark version of the map page
Google Forms survey interface displaying user evaluation responses and usability feedback metrics.
Light mode GIS map tracking unit locations across Wellington while monitoring an active caller audio waveform bar.
Dark mode main map view displaying unit locations around Wellington, radial distance rings, and contextual action menus for unit assignment.
Modal view showing unit status, vehicle types, and distance radius mapping for assigning tactical units to an emergency job.

Week 10: Peer evaluation, user feedback and reporting

  1. We evaluate each other prototypes and provide feedback on how their prototype could be improved further.
  2. Created an evaluation report based on the feedback outlining what will be fixed to improve the prototype.
  3. Studying for the final test.
Quantitative feedback evaluation report featuring bar graphs of user research ratings for usefulness, ease of use, and overall user experience.

Week 11: Improving the prototype

  1. Went through the prototype and look at how I could improve the interactions to make it clearer how the end product would function.
  2. Improved the map icons for units that were “on-scene”
  3. Implemented the notifications drop-down.
Dark mode map screen featuring an open notifications dropdown detailing priority status alerts for active units.

Week 12: Tying up loose ends

  1.  Studied for the final test.
  2. Continued to polish the UI/UX of the prototype.

Designing for clarity under pressure

Police dispatch work doesn’t leave space for interpretation. When everything is urgent, the design has to do one thing well: surface the right information instantly, without adding friction or doubt.

What stood out most in this project was how quickly complexity turns into noise when too much competes for attention. The real design challenge wasn’t structure or layout, it was restraint. Deciding what should disappear so the important parts could stand forward without effort.

This kind of thinking shows up across my work in complex dashboards and design systems, where clarity and hierarchy directly affect how people make decisions in real time. I explored the same problem more recently on the Central Police Dispatch, where the stakes were even higher and the margin for confusion was even smaller.

It’s a reminder that in high-pressure systems, good design isn’t about making things more complete. It’s about making them easier to see.