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PSLT
(Public safety language Training)

A platform for digital-arts mentors to teach and empower mentees
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Role
Design and develop entire website from research to conception, design and development
Client
Alejandra Gomez, CEO & President 
Tony Babb, CTO
Team
Jennifer Lau, No Boundaries Design, LLC
Jonathan Lau, No Boundaries Design
Duration
October 2018–March 2019

An opportunity to bridge gaps.

Founded in 1990, Public Safety Language Training (PSLT) serves its clients by providing practical everyday Spanish courses to public safety responders. Their vision sees a safer and peaceful Spanish-speaking community that trusts their public safety servers. To see their vision through, PSLT teamed with No Boundaries Design to strategize on position of their brand and help with the rebrand of their identity and website design.

Background

After meeting with Alejandra and Tony, their initiative of wanting to bridge communities was fascinating for me. Since I was going to spearhead UX/UI for them, I had to listen to them to understand as I wasn’t familiar with their industry. These were several key points I’ve learned from the project:

  • Listen to Learn. As a designer, I feel it’s necessary to learn and understand what they want and how I get to design a product where it aligns with the brand’s entirety
  • Have an Open Mind. Up until the project, I had a basic knowledge of the public safety industry. It was important for me to rely heavily on their expertise to help better communicate their message and intent to their key audience.
  • Being Professional. A big part of it was being on top of organizing my time and sending notes and designs for Alejandra and Tony to review. Because of the level of consistency, I learned how to be accountable.
Question

HOW DO WE CONNECT PUBLIC SAFETY PERSONNEL WITH ITS COMMUNITY?

– Jennifer Lau, Principal Creative, No Boundaries Design LLC

understanding the problem

Having learnt of PSLT’s initiative, I decided it was important to do a deep dive of their renewed initiative and audience before doing any design work. Through their point of view, the main problems were:  one of the problems they saw was the lack of language barrier between the public safety personnel and the Spanish speaker. Second would be efficiency on the job if the personnel did not know Spanish.

Language barrier. When personnel arrives at scene, parties don’t speak English. Often, they need a child interpreter or call in a person that can speak Spanish.
Lack of efficiency. In some counties, there are not enough public safety personnel on the force that is bilingual.
Lack of Awareness of Certain Communities. Communities not aware of crime or fire preventions. These demonstrations are often in English.

uncovering the goal

By understanding their problems, I better understand how the website will look and feel like.

Help personnels be more approachable and to help personnels build trust and confidence in Spanish
Keeping the community and public safety personnels safe.
Help public safety personnels bridge the gap between themselves and their community
police officers spanish course scaled
firefighters spanish course scaled

establishing key audiences

After understanding PSLT’s objectives, I learn more about who their key users are. PSLT’s target audience are police officers, sheriffs/corrections officers, and firefighters & EMS. Through the stories Tony shared, collectively, these individuals are proactive, friendly, and ambitious.

While many of these public safety have are different while performing tasks, I need to understand how I merge the key audience’s pains and solutions to one where the site’s content is presented efficiently.
police officer@2x
observant & Caring

pains

When conducting a traffic stop, there are times where police officers aren’t able to speak Spanish.

Lack of community.

Lack of confidence in law enforcement.

gains

Officers can be self-sufficient so they don’t depend on others or an interpreter. They can control the situation so they can gather information to be efficient and effective.
The level of fear diminishes since law enforcement speaks Spanish. It’ll build trust and enable them to connect with the community.
Keeps the community safe when learning Spanish. By taking PSLT’s courses, officers are able to learn the visual cues and cultural awareness.
correctional_officer@2x.png
Proactive & Friendly

pains

Not having enough bi-lingual speakers with in the community.
Lack of understanding Spanish in a jail.
Group of officers speak vulgar and incorrect Spanish.

gains

Sheriffs have officers learn on their own and be pro-active. By learning and connecting with people, trust will happen.
Learn to speak with compassion and respect. To remind officers the value of communication to get the job done.

Teaches the respectful way of communicating through Spanish.

firefighter@2x
Outgoing & Social

pains

When there is a medical situation or car accidents involving Spanish speakers, firefighters are not able to communicate properly with them unless bi-lingual.

If the people see the firefighters in the black uniform, they think they are cops within the spanish speakingg community

Lack of confidence in law enforcement.

gains

The course will help them to the vast majority of common calls like pregnancies, overdose, injuries. It’ll provide comfort to both parties.

The course helps firefighters learn to clarify they are not cops. They learn Learn to ask essential questions to calm down a person to find out the problem and remind them they are there to help.

The course will allow firefighters to educate the public about fire safety. It’ll help build a safer community.

Creating Sitemap & storyboard

Before the redesign, we had to make sure how the information architecture was laid out. The current site had a lot of repetitive links that were unnecessary for the user base.

Instead, we ensured the site was empowering and visually pleasing to the eye, and straightforward by reducing the number of repeated links on the current site. 

Pslt's Sitemap

PSLT Architecture@2x

public safety personnel storyboard

PSLT Storyboard@2x

Listed are one the many flows I did for PSLT

PSLT Brand Identity scaled

Creating the Visual Design

After understanding PSLT’s users and the user experience, we identified PSLT as an entity who cares about their clients and its customers. Rather than showing the traditional blues and reds associated with an officer and firefighter, we opened the possibility to PSLT of having the brand be seen as a warm, confident, and empowering entity to its community.

BRAND ATTRIBUTES: LOOK & FEEL​​

confident • empowered • satisfied •
accomplished • friendly

identity inspiration

PSLT’s logo represents a professional, empathetic, compassionate, and a caring company who provides Spanish courses for Police Officers, Firefighters & EMS, and Correctional Officers. It reinforces the company’s brand of building a trustworthy and safe environment amongst the public safety servers and the Latino Community. With a simple and flexible approach of its signature, the logo communicates the company’s message of bringing effective communication for everyone involved in the brand.​
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creating the high-fidelity design

Based on the PSLT’s brand guidelines, the information presented on the site is straightforward for busy public safety personnel. Utilizing the white space of the site makes it more efficient to read. I ensured the brand attributes represented being seen as a warm, confident, and empowering entity to its community.

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“From the beginning, Jennifer Lau stood out above all the other responses to our request for a proposal. She was organized, disciplined and professional in her approach. Every call, had an agenda and she followed up with minutes of the call. She was responsive and understood our business needs. The website she designed was highly creative and projected the image we wanted for our business. We can’t say enough about her services to us. We were more than delighted and satisfied”

Alejandra Gomez
President/CEO of PSLT

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