One important communication responsibility is getting emergency preparation information into the hands of those who need it, so they have the know how and capability to do what's needed when the emergency strikes.
In her PrepTalk, a series of videos provided by FEMA, Professor Claudine Jaenichen covers key elements of preparing people for a coming potential disaster. She uses her experiences, primarily dealing with California tsunami preparedness, to talk about how research can help you understand the people you need to reach, how they receive information and what formats lead to the greatest retention. It is important to understand how individuals, specifically those who need to receive your message, process information before an emergency strikes, as well as predict how they may act during the crisis. Follow along with her slides by visiting her PrepTalk page on the FEMA website.
Key points
Jaenichen gets into the nuts and bolts of why her methodology works. Instead of suggesting some products to have on hand, she makes a strong case for understanding who you are helping to prepare, how they might respond and how you can best reach them before, during and after an emergency.
Create personas
Jaenichen explains that personas are a way to invite your publics into the room with you while you are crafting your messages. Do research into your audiences and to understand the kinds of people that make up the community you are trying to reach. Then create personas of composite individuals that help represent that community.
A single persona actually represents thousands of people within the community, so your personas should come from different socio-economic groups and have different responsibilities, different backgrounds and different education – all relevant to the community. Give them each a name so you don't forget the final reader who will ultimately use your information. This allows you to invite them into your meetings, discussions and thoughts. "What would Joe do?" "How would Andrea react?" Keeping personas present while planning makes it harder to skip over someone's needs.
It's not enough to know your audience groups; you need to consider all the threads that make up the fabric of the community. Be creative and thoughtful when making your personas. Jaenichen used unique and diverse personas such as these for her disaster preparation needs in Santa Barbara:
- A visually impaired adult
- A young soldier without a car
- A retiree with mobility issues
- A caregiver with multiple-aged children
- A couple caring for aging parents
- A tourist unfamiliar with street names
Understand cognitive phenomena
The unconscious personality is a crisis-related psychological concept that is important to understand. A person's unconscious personality, which affects the way they act and think, comes out when they encounter an emergency. Some people might freeze while others may jump into action. There is no way to know for sure what someone's unconscious personality is until that person encounters the pressure of a crisis. They often don't know themselves.
The military understands that unconscious personalities are important. Navy SEALs push their recruits far enough to get to their unconscious personalities in order to test how they will respond during a crisis situation. Recruits without an appropriate unconscious personality don't make the cut.
Several cognitive phenomena may occur when an individual's unconscious personality emerges. Predicting who may be stricken with any of these cognitive phenomena prior to an emergency is impossible, but understanding that these phenomena may occur helps you better plan your communication efforts.
Crisis-related cognitive phenomena that may be encountered:
- Crowd psychology or groupthink is the tendency for people to make decisions in groups because it feels safe, whether it is the correct choice or not ("My neighbor is not evacuating, so I'm staying, too").
- Tunnel vision causes decision making based on singularity with no consideration for the bigger picture. This often leads to bad decisions. For example, someone in the danger zone during a tsunami warning, and suffering from tunnel vision, may decide to get to their car in order to escape quickly, when walking the opposite direction of the parking lot leads to higher ground and is actually a safer and faster way to evacuate.
- Temporary cognitive paralysis is a phenomenon that causes some individuals in crisis to simply stop making decisions at all and just do nothing.
In an emergency situation, some people will be faced with having to learn new information, like evacuation routes, while being hampered by these cognitive triggers that make them less able to take in and process information. This is why it is important to reach people before an emergency strikes, so they have a level of training and understanding to fall back on. However, you must also understand how to make communication easiest for those suffering from these cognitive phenomena in the midst of a crisis.
Retention depends on distribution methods
It's clear that communication regarding an emergency will be more easily processed prior to the emergency event. However, getting someone to understand what to do in an emergency is only half the battle. That same information has to be retained and recalled for use during the event itself.
In her research, Jaenichen tested three different distribution methods to ascertain the best retention of information:
- Audio
- Text
- Visual (text along with images, a map in her study)
Her findings are inline with similar studies:
- Audio information was the hardest for participants to recall both in the short term (after two and four minutes) and long term (after 24 hours).
- Written text performed the best for short-term recollection and was second best in long-term recollection.
- Visual information took the longest time for initial processing but performed the best for long-term recollection.
Her studies led her to decide that a visual presentation (maps) was the best way to communicate preparatory information before an emergency in hopes that it would be more easily recalled during the actual emergency. For this reason, the final map designs were mailed to residents in the tsunami danger zone to facilitate preemptive learning in a leisurely non-stress environment, for those willing to prepare.
The research also points to text messages being easier to process and recall in the short term, which makes them an excellent choice for communication during an emergency event.
Be simple and consistent
The initial map designed for Santa Barbara's tsunami evacuation was very detailed and busy, and covered the entire city. Jaenichen knew the maps needed to be simple and reusable.
The first change was removing the foothills. This area of higher ground is not affected by tsunamis and only serves as noise around the intended message. Next, she developed a standardized visual code for the colors, line weights, fonts, etc. to ensure consistency in the "visual grammar." Accessibility was also taken into account in the visual styling to include such elements as font size and color selection. Then arrows were added to make the communication clear – "This is the direction you need to go." Without arrows, the map is just a reference and not communication.
Since California has a large number of tourists and visitors, the maps were also converted into public signs that were posted in the danger zone. Each map, for every city in California, used the same styles, colors and visual grammar, as well as the same language. This consistency meant that travelers visiting different cities only needed to learn one visual language. Jaenichen also likens visual consistency to branding, which further aids in content retention. Everyone recognizes what the Starbucks logo means when they see it.
The importance of research
The biggest takeaway from Jaenichen's work and presentation is the importance of research. While there may be some similarities and generalizations, every situation and every audience is unique in some way. Her initial instincts told her not to use blue on the maps to represent the tsunami evacuation routes because blue equals water in her mind. However, the research showed that blue was expected by California residents because that color has been used in the state to show tsunami evacuation routes since the 1960s. It's what has been established.
She explains that she would not use the same communication designed for California for tsunami evacuations in Texas or the East Coast because the individuals there and their communication needs, expectations and assumptions would be different and unique. Blue arrows may have a different established meaning in New York City. She expresses her concerns moving forward with a very similar product and approach for California wildfire evacuations without conducting research. Even though the communications address many of the same people, there may be changes in how colors and other conventions differ when dealing with fires, which require different methods of evacuation and preparation. For these reasons, she advocates for evidence-based design and communication. As much as possible, you should test everything and assume nothing.
Jaenichen makes it abundantly clear that even existing preparedness materials need work to ensure their effectiveness. Public affairs professionals and visual information specialists can establish a strong foundation for effective disaster communication by researching the recipients of the information, the cognitive triggers that may affect the recipients, and the retention and recall of the delivery methods.
Follow her lead. Research and review your own communication materials for understanding, cohesiveness, accessibility, consistency and retention.