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00:18 Joshua Preston: You're listening to Tech Unbound with the GVU Center at Georgia Tech. Thanks for joining us. On the show, we explore human-focused technology and computing research at the institute. The work that takes place here today could be the technology you're using tomorrow. I'm your host Joshua Preston and I'll be talking with experts in our research community who will share with us some of their cutting edge innovations, how they impact society, and how they pulled it off. In the GVU Center we're keeping the human in the loop.

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01:04 JP: Computing technology has shaped modern offices and retooled how businesses operate. It would be hard to imagine many jobs without the productivity, creative, financial, and cloud tools that are the engines of many workplaces. As technology gets smaller, cheaper, and more connected jobs that aren't bound to a desk are seeing similar changes. A new study from Georgia Tech shows how wearable technology worn by firefighters impacts the nature of work for emergency responders and how the devices that they used were viewed by frontline firefighters and their commanders. Today I'm joining by Alyssa Rumsey who led the research and who is conducting her work in the Digital Media PhD program at Georgia Tech. Welcome to the show, Alyssa.

01:45 Alyssa Rumsey: Thank you.

01:46 JP: I appreciate you coming on and talking about this. First let us know some details about yourself and what your central work in the program involves. How do you get involved in things like helping understand how the firefighting profession might change wholesale in the near future? 

02:00 AR: That's a great question. So it has a lot to do with my background and as you already mentioned, I'm a PhD student in the digital media program, I'm going into my fourth year, which is hard to believe. But that is only one hat that I wear. I also work full-time for the Center of Innovation for Manufacturing, and we're located here at Georgia Tech, in the Manufacturing Institute, and we're also a part of the Georgia Department of Economic Development. So that really stems from my background in manufacturing as one of my first jobs when I graduated from undergrad, which was also here at Georgia Tech. I went to work for Lockheed, Martin. The first day on the job was the first day on the manufacturing floor. And let me tell you, [chuckle] that was a shock. So I spent the next three years here in Marietta, and in Fort Worth, Texas working directly on the shop floor, building cargo planes and fire jets, working to implement new technologies that would benefit both shop floor workers, as well as the overall productivity for the production manufacturing line. So you can tell that that kind of stream of working with people and technology really started for my first job and opened up these doors for larger questions that I didn't have the time to ask when you're meeting cost and quality deadlines on a shop floor.

03:22 AR: So, I really got inspired by my mentors to come back to school and I would have never thought I would have been in a PhD program, that was never even on the horizon. I was like MBA, climb the corporate ladder, and you know what, I love getting my PhD. A lot of that cred goes out to my advisor Chris La Dantec, who has been very supportive in letting me do my own thing. And a part of that is working with people in real world environments. So firefighters are great example, and they share a lot of similarities actually with manufacturing floor workers in terms of the physical nature of their job and how thankless it can be sometimes. So an example would be, for the manufacturing side, when you go to the grocery store, when you buy new clothes, we don't think about how those products are made and more importantly who made them.

04:21 AR: When we live in our houses and we go to school, we think about firefighters in the same way. So, really getting involved from the ground up started with some engagement that I had previously with a startup community here in Atlanta and a company that came out of that, which was targeting the health and safety of firefighters and I thought, "Yes, this is cool, this is what needs to happen." Bringing more exposure to that is going way beyond just the technology itself, but looking at the organization, looking at what the future of work looks like for these jobs that are really hands-on and employ a majority of the population.

05:02 JP: Wow, that's a pretty amazing trajectory that you took a hard left turn from the corporate track. And it came back and I think we're gonna benefit from that. So the startup that you discovered or worked with or that focused on health and safety for firefighters, this was the startup company that developed the prototype for the study that you did? 

05:21 AR: Yes, exactly.

05:22 JP: Okay. We're not gonna ask you to plug the company, or ask you to, I guess, go out beyond your NDA if if you had to sign one of those. But you know, really the focus is like the reaction or how people, career professionals, emergency responders, would adapt to technology that's supposed to help them in, like you said, life-and-death situations. In your paper you did some great interviews, you got some great statements about how people really knew what the focus of their job should be, and how they can't be distracted from that. Technology's supposed to help, not distract. So there's a lot to unpack. I was really impressed with how you went out into the field with volunteer firefighters, career firefighters. So start us from the top, you basically said, "Alright we have a new device, it's a prototype, and we're gonna figure out how it will work in the field." Where did you start? 

06:17 AR: Yeah, so that's a great question and a lot of props go out to the startup company for boots on the ground community engagements and really having that eye for customer feedback from the beginning. What's interesting is when you really start to look at, "Okay, how that customer feedback shaped the prototype?" and its evolution from working with firefighters from day one, is really telling and from a technologist's perspective, you're in the thick of it, you often don't step back and think "Okay, what is that big picture that is surrounding the infrastructure, the sustainability for my device." You're so focused on getting a device that is manufacturable, that is scalable, that functions every time, and can deliver with what you're saying. So I really was interested in being that other set of eyes in the field for saying, "Okay, how do we help look at different ways to scale technology that take into consideration the organization and the people?"

07:24 AR: So that's a gap often times that we don't think about. Either, like I said, as a startup you've got that one set mentality, or from the researcher's perspective, you've got that lab environment and sometimes making that transition things get lost. So I wanted to be that set of eyes that was like, "Alright, if this is the future, if every firefighter is gonna end up strapping on a wearable device, what does that look like, what does that mean?" And one of the interests that I've always had in this area as well as manufacturing is looking at workforce shortages, that's a common term that we hear a lot, so especially as we were talking about industry 4.0 and the digital revolution, all big buzzwords. So what does that mean for helping get people in these jobs? Firefighters, particularly volunteer and even career, underpaid, undervalued, but necessary. They save what everybody else is so concerned about, and they really do put their lives on the line to help the community, and so a big part of that is how can we help them and figuring out what this wearable device does for them. Are there ways to improve it? And you've gotta start by being on their level, being in their environment. So that was what was really important in kicking this off.

08:55 JP: Let's start there, then.

08:57 AR: Okay.

08:57 JP: I found that, like you said, this company had a focus on the entire ecosystem or impact of people in these careers. So, I found interesting that it started out as like what I think of as a sci-fi -esque type has heads up display.

09:10 AR: Absolutely.

09:12 JP: I'm thinking you have para-military, law enforcement, soldiers with the heads up display on their mask but you discovered they had to pivot themselves. So I guess tell me what you discovered and what that looked like, the first prototype and then eventually what it ended up as.

09:30 AR: Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting to see how it evolved over time, especially from the third-party perspective. So what initially started out as this heads up display, so a firefighter could see through the smoke, that was the idea, it was to help get them information and be able to navigate their environment better, actually turned out to be more of a hindrance. Firefighters kept saying things like, "We don't have enough time to actually consider this information and its impact on us. It gets in the way, it's like blipping on the screen". All of these things weren't something that the firefighters prioritized.

10:11 JP: What type of stuff was on the screen? 

10:13 AR: Yeah. So biometrics for this particular device are displaying things like heart rate, exertion levels, so they're using a DOD algorithm that has been fine-tuned for firefighters to consider what their exertion level is in these high stress, high stakes environments. There's other things like body heat and oxygen levels that are also communicated and those are key indicators so that you know how much time you have left remaining when you're inside a burning building. For example, one of the things I didn't know which you might think is interesting is that typically a firefighter spends about 15 minutes inside, an active fire before having to be cycled out just because of their air time in and out as well as just heat and over-exertion those factors. So you can imagine staffing something like that is gonna be a big concern if you're pulling them out more.

11:12 AR: So one of the reasons that the device changed over time was the firefighter feedback. That's like props. You used customer discovery, you were out there getting feedback from the firefighters and changed your device to meet their needs. But by changing the device, they actually took away all visibility from the firefighter in realtime. So now you can imagine it's more like a Fitbit, where that wearable device you have access to it after the fire. So you've got a profile that's been completed and you can log in and see what your stats were but the incident commander now has access to that via web-based data dashboard during the fire. So how firefighters are connected is usually through comms. They've got everybody paired with comms, but as soon as those firefighters enter a scene, they can't see one another and they rely a lot on those verbal communications. And this incident commander role, which you mentioned is really the key organizer who is making directions and providing insight for how firefighters should act in their surrounding environment and he's the one that now has access to this web-based data dashboard that can communicate the biometrics of the individual firefighters so you can see their real shift in who your end users are, based on firefighter feedback.

12:40 JP: So it ended up being a device for the commander on the ground to assess his team and their safety. So the device clashed with the culture of firefighters saying, "Hey I need to get the job done, I don't need the commander to make the call based on my heart rate, I'm in the situation. I don't want someone to tell me not to finish the job." So it clashed with that culture, the image of fire fighters. But the thing they did like about it, stepping away from the actual emergency response, is they did liked the fact that, "Hey, we can use this in training". And firefighter training, I just can imagine, I don't know if I could last an hour of myself doing what ladder runs, hose drags, what else was there, it's like now there's tire flips, all the stuff you see major level athletes doing. But they did see that as a way to enhance their training, because training of firefighters is something that is usually put on them, so maybe the technology has a role than the real fires. It wasn't what they wanted at all. And so there's again a weird dichotomy there.

13:48 AR: Absolutely, it's one of those things where it's firefighters are wearing 60 pounds of gear, just like in what they put on before they go out the door. So imagine wearing 60 pounds of gear. And now you're doing all these field training exercises in the hot Atlanta sun. All I had to do was stand there and observe, but I saw that and I was like, "This is not for me. I can't believe they are out there doing that right now", and that's what they do in their downtime [chuckle] Talk about downtime [chuckle] I don't know if that would be my first choice.

14:19 JP: Not, me either [chuckle]

14:20 AR: So we definitely don't see that side of firefighters but the history of fire fighting is so ingrained with this image of heroicism and being the one who's saving a child's life, saving a kitten's life from a tree. We have that very historic image of what firefighters are and what they do and that holds very true to their identity even today, and that's a part of what drives their actions. It's a part of what made each one of the firefighters that I interviewed, want to do the job in the first place, is getting that adrenaline rush as a part of it, but also feeling that they had a hand in saving somebody else's life.

15:09 AR: So when you're coming to talk about how you're changing that identity with technology, first you have to understand what that identity is and that takes a lot of time to spend just seeing how they act on a day-to-day basis, hearing some of the stories they tell you about times they jump out a window because a piece of equipment went wrong or the lack of trust that they already have with technology is really critical when we're talking about changing their entire future, and it seems like so small to introduce a biometric device even, but it's one other piece of gear to that 60 pounds. And you would be surprised how particular they are about all the gear that they carry because it is their job. So that's part of the identity piece but it really only starts to touch the surface.

16:03 JP: One of the stats you put out there is over-exertion and stress account for 50% of firefighter deaths. So there's this image that they wanna hold on to. There's this mission critical, I guess, commitment they have just saying "Other people's lives matter more than my own." How do you not make them think that technology is gonna impact that, or cripple their ability to do that job? But their incident commanders do have to look at the fact that we can save their lives, we can figure things out better. So, not a simple issue to address? 

16:36 AR: No.

16:37 JP: But you covered a lot of this with this one particular device, the benefits and the challenges in it. But like you said, they have trust issues with other technology. So I guess, can you comment on the thermal imaging sensor quote, particularly visceral, with the fact that people forgot the basics, they forgot not to use technology as a crutch. I don't know, that's hard, long term. How do you figure this out? 

17:01 AR: Yeah, it's a really interesting balance there between... I think a big part of it is re-education for firefighting as a whole, not just individual fire stations, and departments, but the organization. When you look at the fact that firefighters are responsible for partially pain in some cases, especially for volunteer departments, for their own training. I mean, that's a huge red flag. The other thing is that training is so front loaded for firefighters so they go through really extensive training in the very beginning to get out to the field. As you would imagine that they would. But then it's really up to them to continue to stay educated and aware. A big way to do that is like attending conferences specifically geared towards firefighters. But again, that cost can be prohibitive as well as scheduling. So one of the things that we found is that while we think of volunteer firefighters as doing it part-time, maybe they have another job that is a traditional corporate gig, that's not actually the case. In our results we saw that most volunteer firefighters are actually career firefighters for their full-time job, so not only are they managing more than one job, they're managing the complexities of those schedules and different requirements, so training doesn't become a priority.

18:29 AR: And so that's a big part of it, is looking at education around health and safety. So yes, overexertion has historically been the number one cause for fire fatalities for a very long period of time. And really that relates back to cardiac incidents. And those can happen not in the heat of the moment but any time, it can happen during training, it can happen on the drive home from training and really being aware of what that means for your overall health, and how you can possibly present that is critical. So when we think back again to the history of fire fighting, they used to not wear masks or oxygen. Way back in the day there are these crazy photos of, firefighters had to have long beards and they would use their beard as a filter for the smoke. Okay, can you imagine that? So they have come a long way. We gotta give them a credit. But there's still a long way to go in terms of own individual firefighters health and safety.

19:37 JP: Love it. I'm loving it really. So there's a stereotype that kids pick up technology easier than older people which I think is a myth. But the whole thing is that you also found in your study how the new recruits learn differently, train differently. We were talking about training just a second ago. So new kids, new recruits might be more, maybe, attuned to the technology and love the fact that you can say, "Hey" they can jostle their buddy say, "Hey man, I got better stats that you", with the Fitbit analogy. And then the commanders also again can help increase the physical fitness. So there's all these different groups, demographics, age groups, the frontline guys versus the commanders. So I don't know how you wanna tackle this, but is it a generational thing? Is it seen as a division in firefighters for frontline and commanders, blue collar versus white color? I don't know if that's even fair to characterize it that way.

20:38 AR: Yeah, I mean you know as well as I know that this is a much deeper, bigger problem. And when we look at firefighting it provides some interesting examples of technology integration and different ways to pursue it. So I wouldn't say it's a black and white division because you find people that have been in fire-fighting for a really long time. And are super excited, super supportive. You need that from a leadership perspective in order to get a lot of these technologies, even into the field for pilot studies. And that's just not in fire fighting but across the board when we're looking at different types of industries, especially manufacturing too. And so when we think about ways to integrate new technology, I think it's important to look at how do you make work fun again? And I think a big part of that too in making the industry look or appear fun is targeting new ways to introduce it at very early stages. So yes, that does mean that oftentimes you're gonna be focusing on new younger talent because they're trying to fill workforce gaps. So one of the things in firefighting is you will commonly hear that they need more bodies. And a technology like this wearable device, if it's used in the way that it was originally idealized by the technologists then that means that they're gonna need even more bodies because a commander is gonna be able to pull a fire fighter out of the fire, if their heart rate spikes.

22:15 AR: So you need staffing on the back end, which was something that we heard a lot from recipients about their hesitation when going into live fire scenarios with this wearable device. So, that staffing then comes back to, "Okay, well how do we attract and retain new talent?" So I think a big part of that, it's not just the wearable device but we heard from several of the interviews, using things like YouTube, doing things like podcasts. Being on a different level of engagement with the curriculum. One of the things I thought was super interesting, when we think about these types of really hands-on jobs, we often think that a certain set of population is not gonna have the skills or be able to adapt. So we're always like, "Alright, let's use technology, and let's fix that gap." Okay, there's definitely merit there, and there's definitely work that still needs to be done but these firefighters actually told us that one of the issues they are having is not on the technology side, it's not on the software side, or soft skills even, it's actually on using things like saws, it's on using things that can get people out of car accidents.

23:33 AR: It's those very labor intensive tools that we don't use nowadays, so while we're telling everybody to go to coding boot camp, what about [chuckle] using a chainsaw to cut down a tree? So that balance is definitely one that we need to think about, especially when we have those stigmas, we're like, "Oh the young generation knows how to use technology, so we just need to leverage the fact that they know technology, to teach the older generation". Partially, but what about the role that the older generation plays too in teaching them how to use these chainsaws, how to use sledge hammers, how to use a whole myriad of specialized tools that they are very intimately familiar with, and maybe it can't be captured by setting up a virtual reality or it has to be done in the field on real examples. So I think it goes both ways and sometimes we miss that other half of the story.

24:35 JP: So in some ways, your technology research has helped uncover these more holistic issues that have to be addressed and these different types of jobs? 

24:45 AR: Absolutely.

24:46 JP: Amazing stuff. So, how would people get involved? So this is the advice part of the show. You've done this, you're a fourth year PhD student, you understand organizations, but where do people get even started their interest in the same type of work and wanna follow you in your footsteps? 

25:04 AR: Yeah, that's a great question [chuckle] I'm still figuring it out myself, but I think one of the things I've seen be really valuable to me in my own experience has been real work experience. I wouldn't have this level of understanding or appreciation for how organizations work if I hadn't worked in one, and if I didn't like it. I needed to go through that experience to understand what about it I wanted to change. So that's one of the things I would say. I would also say ask, always ask. So a lot of the times as researchers we end up just being stuck in the lab environment and yeah, we try to get out, we try and do customer development, customer surveys, certainly, but you would be surprised at the number of companies that would welcome your technology in for a pilot study.

26:01 AR: I think that has been surprising to a lot of people around me that have seen the type of work that I do. Because people say, "Yes." And I think that's another thing that I'm struggling with is looking at, as a research community, how do we fund these engagements? Because oftentimes they're not with large companies, so I struggle with that because I think the real impact is looking at small and medium-sized companies and firefighters fit into that mold. They operate as small community companies, community organizations. And there aren't a lot of opportunities for researchers to really find and use funding to cover hardware costs, to cover pilots that are long-term, that are past this kind of initial demo phase. So I think that's an opportunity for us as a research community to really come together and think about who are we impacting with our technology.

27:00 JP: You've done a tremendous service of figuring out this portion of the Human-Computer Interaction research, helping this company. Is this going anywhere after this or you have other things in the program that you're focusing on? 

27:12 AR: Well, I will definitely always be [chuckle] friends with the firefighters that I met in the field and the startup company, and they know that, and I think it's part of our responsibility as researchers to make sure that we have that continuing relationship. Right now we're actually looking at doing some more studies in manufacturing and looking at instead of wearable devices looking at... It's a different, I would call it a different form of wearable device, but looking at augmented reality or Google Glass in the manufacturing floor environment, so shop floor workers, and seeing really what are those differences? And I believe there will be probably a lot of similarities to firefighters and wearable devices as well.

27:55 JP: Very cool, do you have any advice for... You've already given your advice on where to start with this particular work, but for aspiring PhD students who wanna come to Georgia Tech? We're gonna plug George Tech real quick.

28:07 AR: Oh yeah, I mean I'm Georgia Tech through and through, so [chuckle] I'm right there with you. I think George Tech is fantastic. I think there are so many resources that are on campus that students don't know about or don't leverage. And so one of my biggest things would be email professors, email researchers, I like to call them "informational meetings" in the email title. [chuckle] I've had no one say no to an informational meeting with me yet.

28:37 JP: So it works.

28:38 AR: Yeah, it does work, and I think it's a great way to learn about everything that tech has to offer, even with the community. That's part of what, and how, I got connected with all of the firefighters was just asking them for their feedback. And "Tell me about yourself." I think everyone likes to talk about themselves just a little bit. So that's a big part of one way to take advantage of Georgia Tech and all it has to offer.

29:05 JP: Good advice. Thanks, thank you and we're gonna include in the show notes, a copy of your research paper. It's called Clearing The Smoke, and that's the slug, there's an actual formal title after that and it actually goes into detail. It was published in the designing interactive systems conference which took place in June. So we'll include that and a link to Alyssa's other work and we look forward to great things from you in the future, at least one more year before you finish the program.

29:32 AR: At least [chuckle] yes, famous last words. But thank you so much for having me and if anybody has any questions or wants to I get in touch there are numerous media forms, so find me.

29:46 JP: Excellent and if you're interested in more research in the GVU Center check us out online. This has been the Tech Unbound Podcast with the GVU Center. Thanks for joining us, we'll catch you next time.

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