Hello! My name is Shayna Cesaro and I am a senior Interactive Multimedia major with a minor in Marketing. I have a passion for graphic design, digital and social media marketing, and user experience design. My main goal is to cultivate aspects of these three topics of interest into my senior thesis project by implementing skills that I have developed through my studies. For my senior thesis project idea, I knew that I wanted to make something not only practical, but useful as well. I did not want to make something just for the sake of making it. I wanted to be able to come out of the senior thesis project process feeling as though I spent my time wisely designing something that can positively impact others, whether it be myself, my peers or the world around me.
My current idea is inspired by the work done by the Critical Response Group based out of Ewing, NJ. The Critical Response Group was the first in the nation to develop a visual communication tool known as the Collaborative Response Graphic (CRG) that can be used by first responders to strengthen response time and improve command and control while attending to an emergency incident. CRGs are gridded, architectural maps that depict the floor plan of a structure. These maps include everything that a first responder needs to know to coordinate a emergency response within a structure, including room labels, hallway names, external door/stairwell numbers, and key utility locations.
Public safety has never been called into question and tested more than right now in the year 2020. For the first time in a long time, many have become increasingly fearful of their own safety and the safety of their family, friends, community and much more. Current events show us that communities across the United States need to be prepared for any type of emergency situation, and this is no more true than in our public-school systems.
In today’s world, school shootings, and other crisis situations, are very real threats to the lives of students nationwide. While I was growing up, I felt this quite frequently while watching the news or during school lockdowns, lockouts, bomb drills, and other crisis management trainings. The realities of the world show that public safety, and our own personal safety, can be tried and tested at any point in time which often worries me, my friends, family, educators, and others that surround me. There has been a lot of work done within the past decade to increase the readiness of schools and school districts to respond to different types of threats. Specifically, many schools across the nation have adopted the Standard Response Protocol (SRP) created by the I Love You Guys Foundation which implements tactics to respond to weather events, fires, accidents, intruders and other threats to student safety.
While CRGs are architectural maps created to aid first responders in ministering assistance during an emergency, my idea will be to develop a graphic that can be used as reference for faculty, staff, and students within specific school districts to prepare for unique crisis situations. This map will be in compliance with the strategies implemented within the Standard Response Protocol and will be created to be understood by people of all ages, whether it be kindergarteners or adult teachers and staff.
Overall, I will take a preexisting architectural plan of a school, like the one depicted below, to make a simple, easy-to-use mapped floorplan equipped with room labels, stairway, fire alarm and exit markers, window locations and other key location representations that can be easily followed and recognized by students and school faculty.
My hope is to make students and educators feel more comfortable and secure in their everyday learning environments by equipping them with tools they can use to better prepare themselves for potential crisis situations.
Currently, I am doing research into how to make this school emergency reference tool as intuitive and user-friendly as possible. The representations, icons and other markers it will include must be universally recognizable and understandable to people no matter their age, education level or background. I am also looking into how I can properly integrate this concept with the tactics detailed within the Standard Response Protocol and how the two can work conjointly. Lastly, I am currently brainstorming the ways in which my project can be utilized within a school. Will teachers need to introduce students to the map and its contents, or will it be placed on walls around a school building to be used simply as reference when necessary?
Hey Shayna, what a great idea!
After reading through, I have just a few questions: What school will you make this for? Could you make one for the buildings in TCNJ? (I think it’d be interesting to add to the Roar app!) Or maybe just the residence halls, or maybe just the common buildings like Eick, the Library, and the STUD?
I’m also curious about the security around building maps– I specifically remember my high school almost *never* giving out a map so it’d be more difficult for intruders to navigate / plan an attack. I don’t even think I found one online anywhere when I searched in HS. How will this play into your design? Also, potentially you could install signs, especially if you’re aiming at a younger demographic, signs that say “SAFETY THIS WAY” or something like that, something that feels less threatening than the “EXIT” sign? Maybe something complimentary to Exit signs? Maybe something on the floor?
Anywho, really unique approach to thesis, I’m excited to see what you create!