About Product
ACOM Command & Control is designed to meet the complex demands of critical communication centres throughout the world. With its combination of advanced telephony capabilities and radio integration, ACOM delivers a robust, command and control system. ACOM offers the most complete mission-critical communications solution.
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Project Overview
This speculative UX case study explores how ACOM can increase notification trust with a simple feature. Designed as an efficient option, the feature gives users a more visible indication and how other states are exiting in comparison, balancing time/colour tone and expectations.
Challenges
1. Design a user-centred indication experience
2. Seamless user experience to the legacy version
Key insights
During the user's interview and workshop, common pain points emerged,
1. How do we make the emergency call state stand out?
2. How do we deliver a seamless experience who use the legacy version?
Definition
Discovery
Visual Hierarchy and Critical Colour Audit
This exercise mapped the colour usage for notifications across Light and Dark themes to establish a clear Visual Hierarchy (Low, Medium, High Attention). It identified an urgent problem with the High-attention colour (red): the current implementation is insufficient for communicating immediate action requests. It presents potential accessibility issues (colour blindness and skin tone conflict). The findings necessitate an immediate revision to the design of the critical notification system.
Motion Layering for Emergency Notifications
This exercise analyses the current vs. proposed Visual Hierarchy stack to determine where a motion-based (Flashing) notification layer should sit.
The current design conflates background and notification states, leading to poor visibility for critical alerts. The proposed solution separates the stack into distinct Notification, Activity, and Idle layers, dedicating a separate Static/Motion (Flash) layer exclusively for Emergency states.
The benefit is explicitly to improve the critical notification experience and enhance usability for color-blind users by using motion as a secondary indicator.
Opportunity
Motion Layering and Visibility Conflict
This stage explored utilising a flashing border (motion layer) as a distinct, secondary indicator for critical or high-attention states. The intent was to enhance visibility and improve the experience for color-blind users by introducing an interval-based flash (e.g., Flash-Default-Flash).
However, testing revealed a visual restriction: when the default colour of the element's border (such as the blue used for 'Select' or 'Outgoing PTT') shares a similar tone or low contrast with the flashing colour, the motion effect is significantly diminished. This visual conflict compromises the effectiveness of the flashing alert, requiring a revised motion solution to ensure immediate user notification across all primary states.
Iteration
Finalised Motion Alert Implementation: Thickness and Timing
This phase finalised the motion-based notification solution designed to overcome previous visibility conflicts (especially for color-blind users). Through iterative design and engineering collaboration, the team validated the optimal visual parameters:
Border Thickness: The critical alert border was increased from 4px to a maximum of 6px, which user testing confirmed offers the best visual indication.
Motion Effect: The effect was implemented as a clear "bumping" motion by transitioning the border thickness from 6px down to 0px.
Interval Timing: The flashing interval was precisely set at 0.3 seconds per flash in collaboration with the engineer to ensure reliable performance.
AB Testing
Flashing-border prototype
Following the completion of the high-fidelity prototype, a usability study was conducted with five participants to validate core interactions and performance.
Usability study
The flashing red border prototype greatly improved usability by reducing emergency detection time from 3–5 seconds to 1–2 seconds, achieving 100% recognition accuracy, and enabling operators to prioritise emergencies immediately.
Participants reported higher confidence and trust in the system (4.5/5 vs. 3/5), noting the alert was clear, eye-catching, and reliable.
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Design constraints and tradeoffs
While conceptually simple, this feature presents further complexity. Alarm sound synchronisation.
Edge case study
Alarm-Flash Synchronisation
In some scenarios, ACOM functions as a sub-product and may be positioned away from the operator’s primary line of sight, making visual alerts less noticeable.
To address this, ACOM enhances emergency detection by synchronising the alarm sound with the flashing border of the resource panel. This multi-sensory cue ensures that even if the panel is not in view, operators are still immediately alerted through both audio and visual signals, reducing the risk of missed emergencies.
Trade-off: However, due to technical feasibility challenges and task complexity, this feature has been moved to the next development phase for further refinement.
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Business impact
Flashing border with an increment thickness unlocks benefits across the experience:
1. Customer Satisfaction → Clearer expectations, higher trust
2. Personalisation → App adapts to user values
3. Operational Fit → Integrates with existing feature
Final takeaways
This project showed how small changes in notifications can unlock large shifts in trust and satisfaction. It’s not just about 'Flashing' — it’s about making the user feel seen, heard, and understood.
The smartest solution isn’t always the complex. It’s the one that aligns with your intent.