Revive

Connecting Dawgs to Defibrillators.

18 min readDec 7, 2021

An app created and developed by Julia Deaton and Auriel Byrd.

What is Revive?

Revive is an iOS app that connects students, visitors, staff, and faculty to defibrillators on the campus of the University of Georgia.

Why Revive?

Cardiac arrest, heart failure and heart irregularities are one of the most common health issues in the world. People of all ages, backgrounds and health conditions can have heart conditions and issues that can require action in a second. If someone experiences cardiac arrest, their chance of survival increases immensely if a defibrillator is used on them, and the faster that defibrillator gets to them, the better their chances of survival. The problem with using defibrillators is that time is of the essence, and in these stressful situations it can be hard to locate and navigate to the nearest defibrillator quickly. Enter: Revive.

Revive is an iOS app that provides users with the location of and directions to defibrillators on the UGA campus. It helps users navigate to the nearest defibrillator and back to your initial location if needed. It provides helpful instructions for defibrillator use during emergency and non-emergency situations. By helping users get to defibrillators quickly and providing helpful instructions for the next steps, Revive will help minimize the amount of deaths due to heart related emergencies, and help UGA faculty, staff, students, & visitors feel more at ease knowing that they have a tool that will help them and others in case of an emergency.

Revive is an app that functions on mobile iOS. We encourage Apple watch users to take advantage of the heart rate notifications and features which can help them know if they are having an irregular heart rate, so they can then utilize Revive. Revive will provide directions to the nearest defibrillator, helpful instructions for defibrillator use, and can notify the user’s emergency contacts. Revive connects dawgs to defibrillators. When time is of the essence, Revive will get you there faster.

Meet the team

Revive was created by Julia Deaton and Auriel Byrd. They are both graduate students at the University of Georgia in the Emerging Media Masters program. Auriel graduated in 2021 with her undergraduate degree in Photography. Julia also graduated in 2021, with her undergraduate degree in Entertainment and Media Studies. Both Julia and Auriel love all things media and design. They both love UGA and helping people, which made them a great match to create Revive together.

Why we created Revive

Heart conditions and heart related are very common and unpredictable. Heart related emergencies are also very unpredictable, and time is of the essence in these situations. Research has shown that the faster someone experiencing cardiac arrest has a defibrillator used on them, the higher their chance of survival. Research also shows that bystanders can be a big part of helping those experiencing cardiac arrest.

“…people are more likely to survive a cardiac arrest if a bystander uses a defibrillator while waiting for emergency medical services to arrive…1,700 additional lives were saved each year in the U.S. from a bystanders use of defibrillators.” — National Institutes of Health, 2018

This is why we created Revive. We want to empower those on UGA’s campus with an app that can help them find the nearest defibrillator, navigate them to it, send an emergency message, and provide potentially life-saving instructions, whether it be to help themselves, or someone else.

Hypothesis

Providing a map with detailed information and locations of AEDs on the University of Georgia’s campus, directions to and from those locations, and phone call and emergency messaging abilities for students, faculty, staff, and visitors on the UGA campus will decrease the response time in an emergency.

Goals

Increase confidence and comfort in bystanders when responding in emergency situations.
Provide features that give users a useful resource that educates and aids before and during an emergency.
Decrease the amount of time it takes to respond in an emergency and locate an AED on the UGA campus.

Who is Revive for?

We created Revive primarily for those who use their Apple watches to
monitor their heart rates and those who may need a defibrillator at some point.While not exclusively,this is group that is mostly of an older age,
ranging from around 45–75.However,the great thing about Revive is
that it can benefit anyone who uses it.They could use it as peace of
mind for themselves, or as a bystander who is prepared to step in and
help in case of an emergency. Anyone from a student, to faculty, to staff, to
visitors of UGAʼs campus (sports fans, parents on college visits with
their children, grandparents visiting their grandchildren in college, etc.)
can benefit from being able to locate and get to a defibrillator quickly in
case of their own medical emergency or as a helpful and life saving
bystander in someone elseʼs medical emergency.This brings our total
audience age range from about 18–75.With this in mind, we have
created Revive to be very simple, direct, and easy to use so that anyone
in this range is able to efficiently use it. We created some personas to keep in mind when designing Revive.

Market Research

Revive stands apart in the market because there is no existing feature like it that provides students, faculty, and visitors with a guide to direct locations to the locations of AED’s on UGA’s campus. Revive also provides information on proper AED use along with the ability to add and notify emergency contacts which is currently not offered within the UGA app. We did research on any apps that seemed similar to Revive. These apps may offer one or both of these features, but they are created in a way that can be very confusing to operate in an emergency situation. One app we looked at, PulsePoint, gives users the ability to add AED locations they know of to build a community AED registry. While we admire this idea and think it is helpful, we wanted to make sure we provided every AED location on campus so that users will already have this information and not have to depend on others. We did this by inputing the exact latitudinal and longitudinal locations of every single AED on campus, sourced from the UGA Emergency Preparedness Office, which is responsible for all AEDs on campus. We believe this gives users an extra feeling of security and confidence that they are getting the most accurate locations of AEDs possible. We strive to stand above any other apps by providing users with an app that gives them a sense of comfort, ease of use, and preparedness in the case of an emergency situation. Our success will be measured in users’ increased comfort and confidence to respond if needed during an emergency and the increase of lives saved during heart related emergencies on UGA’s campus.

Style Guide & Branding

Color

Our primary color palette follows the University of Georgia brand colors since Revive has been specifically formulated for the UGA campus. Our red color symbolizes urgency, health, and the heart. Our green and yellow colors were chosen because while AED’s typically are primarily white, black, and red, some models use these bright yellow and green colors.

Accessibility

Accessibility has been an important aspect while designing Revive since we aim for simplicity, clarity, and ease of use. We created this accessibility guide to show best practices when using text colors with every color included in our color palette.

Typography

Since Revive is an iOS app, we chose to use the typefaces that Apple uses. They are clear and easily readable fonts. We created charts that outline specifically how to successfully use the typefaces within the app.

Logos

We have created a series of Revive logos to be used.

Technology

Revive was created using Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator, Swift and Xcode.

Adobe XD is a vector-based user experience design tool for web and mobile apps. We used Adobe XD to prototype Revive. We used Adobe XD to design the wireframes of what we wanted Revive to look like before we developed it. This allowed us to get a sense of what worked well in terms of design and user experience before getting to the code of the app.

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and design program. We used Illustrator to create our design system, logos, and any other graphics. Since Illustrator is vector based, the graphics we created on it are able to be resized without losing quality or becoming distorted. This is especially important when using our graphics and logo in the development of the app because we could scale them down to fit well onto a small surface, like a mobile iPhone screen.

Xcode is Apple’s integrated development environment, which is used to develop software for Apple products, such as iOS, which we used it for. Swift is the programming language for iOS. We used these together to develop the actual iOS app for Revive. We used the coding language of Swift to create the code in Xcode needed to make Revive function.

Partnership

While Auriel and I created Revive ourselves and did not work for a client, we did partner with the University of Georgia Emergency Preparedness Office. We partnered with them for all of the AED locations as well as using their resources to take photos of the actual UGA AED’s to use in the imagery in Revive. We gave each other good insight about creating resources to increase safety and emergency preparedness on UGA’s campus.

Journey from Alpha to Beta

After we received feedback on our Alpha version of Revive, we made some changes in order to increase its efficiency and ease of use. We planned on making some interface updates, so we looked at improving the map view by adding some buttons that opened up to new views and we also revamped our design of the app making sure our functions made the app easy to use. Then we did some further development work with our different components such as making sure the directions to an AED location and sending an emergency message were working properly. We then went into a long phase of researching more about the addition of an Apple watch component of our app and also other components such as widgets and a Siri Shortcuts. We came to the conclusion of possibly further developing these later on in the process depending on data and feedback we recieve after user testing.

Beta Features

Journey from Beta to 1.0

User Testing Research & Findings

With our Beta version ready for testing, we began to reach out and find participants to test Revive and give us their feedback. We tested a variety of people and got some great insight from their thoughts. We were pretty happy with most of the feedback.

Our testing calculations showed that Revive fell in the above average range for usability according to usability.gov, with an Average System Usability Scale Score of 89.5. We also found that the average pass/fail task success rate was 76% and 68% of users found Revive useful in an emergency situation.

We also got some feedback that we used to help us figure out what improvements needed to be made when moving to out 1.0. Some users felt that the paw print icons were too big, which made the map screen look overwhelming. Others thought it would be beneficial to have our imagery feature the actual AEDs used on campus rather than a stock image of one of a different style. We addressed both of these issue as we made improvements.

Improvements

We made the icon paw prints smaller and the map view open to a more condensed area, making it less overwhelming. We also changed the shape and color of the current location button to stand out more from the icons, and to be more clear. We moved our search and information buttons to the tab bar based on feedback received in testing.

We changed the imagery used in our instructions tab to feature real UGA AEDs. We met with the Office of Emergency Preparedness and used their devices to take the images. This will allow users to feel more comfortable if they need to use the instructions tab, as they will see the actual device they would be using.

We also changed the icons on the help screen to buttons that will take the user to their respective pages.

Final 1.0 Features

Revive has several features that have been carefully thought out and created for easy, simple, and fast use.

One of Revive’s main features is a map view of UGA’s campus with defibrillator locations indicated by the Revive icon. Once you open the app, you are taken to this map view so that you have a quick visual of all of the defibrillators near your current location. Once the user selects a location, maps will open and direct the user to that location.
Another feature is the AED location list view. Users can scroll through a list of AED locations on campus. Pictures are added for easy building recognition. If a user clicks on a location, they can see exactly where the AED in that building is located. They can also use the call button to call directly to that building if they need assistance, or use the “Go Here Now” button to open maps and be navigated to that location.

Another feature is the instructions tab. Users can click on this tab to be navigated to a page with very clear and detailed instructions for AED use. Having these visual instructions is very important in an emergency. Even those who may have been trained to use an AED before may become panicked in an emergency, and having clear instructions will help them use the AED safely and efficiently. This page also features useful information about good samaritan laws that will give quick reassurance to a bystander using Revive to help someone else.

Revive then has the contacts tab. Users can click this tab to be navigated to a page where they can add an emergency contact, and immediately send their emergency contacts a text message alerting them to their emergency. This saves the user from having to type a message if they are in distress.
The next tab is the Help tab where users can click on the tab to navigate to a help page that gives them tips on how to set heart rate notifications on Apple watch, and what they should do if they receive an alert.

What’s next for Revive?

We believe the future of Revive looks very bright, and we only want to make it more efficient and user friendly. Some different technologies that we have discussed looking forward are the possibility of adding a Revive widget, or even adding a Siri shortcut. Revive is all about helping others, and we could see it expanding to other college campuses, corporate offices, or even through communities (for example: the Downtown Athens area) in the future to help more and more people become prepared.

Impact

We believe that Revive will increase confidence and comfort in bystanders when responding in emergency situations. It will decrease the amount of time it takes to respond in an emergency situation and locate an AED on the UGA campus. We hope that it will be an app that you will download and never have to use, but if you found yourself in an emergency, you would be thankful you had. Revive has the potential to save lives. We want you to have Revive to look out for not only yourselves, but for your fellow Dawgs as well, because as we all know, dawgs never bark alone.

Lessons learned

If at first you don’t succeed…. Try again! We learned that a lot of things do not always go to plan the first time, especially in development. We are still learning about the technologies we used to create Revive so sometimes we would run into some roadblocks. When this happened, we would do a lot of research which would then help us move along.
Be prepared to adapt and pivot. Going along with the point above, some ideas and plans may just not work out. When this happened, we learned that we had to be willing to sit and think about a new solution, even if we were frustrated. Being able to take a problem and think creatively about it to turn it into a new solution is a big lesson we had to learn, but is such a useful skill.
Do not be afraid to reach out to others for help and advice. Everyone we reached out to became very interested in the project and was more than willing to help. We made connections with the UGA Office of Emergency Preparedness and got some great information and resources from them during our research phase. We also quickly learned to take advantage of the NMI Experts as they are very knowledgeable and eager to help us out with design and development questions.
You can always learn more. The technologies we are using are ever changing so being prepared for things to change mid-development is important. There is so much to learn about them and you can always be learning something new and improving your knowledge on them.
Keep things simple in design. When it came to design, we learned to really focus on designing for a very easy to use and quick user experience. We learned simplicity is best and to think about Jakob’s Law when we were designing.

Our Emerging Media Journeys & Advice

Auriel

My EM journey has taught me so much about myself, and also pushed me to strive to new heights that I would have never imagined for myself. I have learned so much and my skills have definitely been put to the test. In times that I have doubted my abilities, thinking back on this entire journey has reminded me of how capable I am and how far that I have come in one fast-paced year. I am so thankful for every up and down that I have faced, and all of the teachers in the NMI that have given me that motivation to push me forward no matter the circumstances. I can proudly say that I can add so many new technical skills to my resume, but also personal skills. Along with learning new programming languages, building apps, and formulating design systems and testing plans, I have also learned the importance of creativity, adaptability, and perseverance. No matter where my life takes me and what future career I end up in, I will always look back in awe at this journey and how far it brought me.

My advice for future EM students is DON’T GIVE UP!! There are going to be times when you want to throw your laptop against the wall, but trust me, in the end your hard-work and diligence will be so rewarding. Remember to lean on those closest to you whether it be your friends or family. Also, don’t forget your EM cohort family. You will be spending so much time with these people, and will become closer than you ever thought. Cherish those new friendships and be open to every opportunity that arises to be their motivation and support system. Last but not least, confide in the amazing NMI staff. They are some of the most amazing people I have come into contact with in my entire college years, and if anyone can motivate and push you, they can. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, tell them. If you’re proud of yourself for accomplishing some great task, tell them! Either way, they’ll be there for you and support you no matter what.

Julia

I have learned SO much since starting my EM journey. I have learned skills I truly never would have imagined I would learn! I have gained so many technical skills since starting out in the summer. While I still have a lot to learn, if you would have told me before I started that I would learn how to code I would not have believed you! I have always loved designing and having development skills to go with that will definitely help me bring ideas to life. I have also learned so much about user experience and ethics, which is such an important part of good design. This year has been very fast paced, challenging, and has pushed me to new limits. But it has also shown me how much I am capable of learning and creating! I have learned so much about the things I enjoy creating, and found new topics that I am very passionate about, like using user experience and design to help users. I am very excited to have a portfolio of really awesome products that show off the skills that we have learned to use as I advance my career after graduation. It has been a fast and challenging adventure but a very rewarding one and I can’t wait to see what more there is to learn!

My advice for future EM students is to always have an open mind and keep thinking creatively! You will ultimately run into roadblocks, but being able to adapt and come up with a creative solution is a huge skill and will help you come up with even better ideas. Like Auriel said, your hard work will be so rewarding. Take care of yourself and take laptop breaks!! The program can be very fast paced at times, but try to take a moment to pause and reflect on all that you have learned. Pat yourself on the back and take pride in the work you are creating! Also agreeing with Auriel, take advantage of being surrounded by your EM cohort family. My classmates are all awesome and have such unique ideas and talents. These are great people to learn from. The same goes for all of the awesome NMI Staff! They want to see you succeed and are always there to help. Oh, and also, always take advantage of Xpert hours!

A message to our cohort:

Well guys, we’re almost there! We are so glad we have gotten to know every single one of you so well throughout this past year. Thank you for all of your great advice, ideas, and feedback along the way! You guys are all so talented and we can not wait to see where life takes you. We want to give a special shoutout to Lindsay Robinson, Katie Cowart, Darby Ashe, Meghan Telling, and Olivia Sprott, who we worked with in a sprint project in summer 2021 in our project management class. This project was the beginning of Revive (known as the Defibrillocator then!) and we want to thank them for all of their work and ideas on the early stages of the project, and for being so supportive and encouraging of us when we decided to move forward to further develop the idea for our capstone. We couldn’t have done it without you guys! We love everyone else’s projects so much and we can not wait to see where PetPortal, 123NFT, Metropolis, Historic Athens and Freddy the Thingbug are headed. We love y’all and best of luck! — Julia & Auriel