When every minute counts, firefighters shouldn't fight their tools.
Flame Tracker: a unified command dashboard for wildfire response teams, replacing disconnected tools with one clear interface.
My Role
UX & Product Designer
Scope
Research, UX, UI, Prototyping
Timeline
4 weeks
Tools
Figma, Figjam
THE CONTEXT
A friend asked me a question I couldn't stop thinking about.
A close friend works at a company building IoT sensor networks for ultra-early wildfire detection. Their sensors can detect a fire before flames even appear. One day, he described what happens after detection: response teams juggling disconnected platforms, critical data scattered across tools, decisions made under extreme pressure with incomplete information.
What if there was one place where a response team could see everything they need and act on it?
That question became Flame Tracker: a concept project exploring how design could bring clarity to one of the most chaotic, high-stakes environments imaginable.
THE PROBLEM
Response teams were drowning in tools, not information.
Through desk research and conversations about real operational workflows, a clear pattern emerged: the problem wasn't a lack of data. It was fragmentation.
Fragmented tooling
Firefighters navigate between 3 to 5 disconnected systems during a single incident, each with different interfaces and data formats.
Context switching under pressure
Every tool switch costs cognitive load. In time-critical scenarios, these micro-delays compound into real risk.
No single source of truth
Incident commanders often make decisions based on partial information because aggregating data manually takes too long.
Communication gaps
Field teams and command centers frequently operate on different versions of the same situation.
"The user must access critical information within 10 minutes, often in the complete absence of structure."
The Project Delivery
"How might we consolidate fragmented wildfire response tools into a single interface that helps teams monitor, assess, and act without information overload?"
This meant designing for two seemingly opposite goals: comprehensive information access and extreme cognitive simplicity.
What
Monitor fire incidents, sensor alerts, and environmental changes in real time from a single view.
Source
Aggregate data from IoT sensors, weather services, terrain mapping, and team communications.
Place
A map-centered interface where location is meaning and spatial awareness drives every decision.
DESIGNING FOR REAL ALERTS
The map is the gateway.
Emergency responders need to see the full picture before they can act. The map reveals information in layers, each using a carefully chosen color palette designed to remain readable when overlaid.
The map as the primary surface
The map isn’t decoration, it’s the main interaction surface. Active incidents, sensor positions, team locations, and resource deployment all live on the map. Users can click any incident to open contextual details without leaving their spatial context.
In wildfire response, losing your sense of where things are means losing situational awareness, so the map is always visible, no matter what panel is open.
BEYOND THE MAP
The map is the entry point, but Flame Tracker includes a full suite of tools that responders interact with every day. Each one maps back to the 5-phase framework.
MAP CENTERED WILDFIRE TRACKER DASHBOARD
Everything in one place.
The full dashboard brings together monitoring, assessment, resource management, and communication into a single spatial interface. Incident commanders can scan, decide, and act without ever switching tools.
THE DASHBOARD IN DETAIL
Explore each capability.
The Command Dashboard
Contextual messaging
Incident Tracking
Weather Intelligence
Analytics & Reporting
RESULTS
What the Team got.
REFLECTIONS
