Command Line’s Not Dead: Designing for 911 Dispatchers

What’s it like to design for literal life-or-death situations? When we began our multiyear journey to build software for 911 dispatchers, we weren’t sure. Designing professional tools is similar in approach to designing consumer products, but we had to learn key differences the hard way. We found that “best practices” often did not lead to the best solution. We encountered patterns not considered or used by most designers today. We discovered how many assumptions underlie design convention. And at the end of the day we re-learned an old lesson: To focus on users instead of falling back on design dogma.