[CAP] The “User Experience” of Warnings in EAS

[Art Botterell]

Apologies for cross-posting myself, but I think these questions are  
going to be important to the whole CAP community, not just  
broadcasters... - Art

http://www.incident.com/blog/?p=50
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The User Experience of Warnings in EAS
May 8th, 2008

In the runup to the May 19th EAS Showdow um Summit in Washington,  
DC, most of the discussion has focused on the nuts and bolts of moving  
the nations broadcast alerts across digital networks based on CAP.

But CAP only defines the information payload of a warning. It  
doesnt specify how that information should be presented over HD  
radio, digital TV, computers, PDAs, digital signage or any of our  
various other windows into the infosphere.

This is going to become a crucial question in the very near future, I  
think. As digitization drives broadcast content onto ever more  
diverse platforms were going to need to give these presentation/user  
interface issues as much attention as we have to transport/relay- 
network design.

We may want to develop some common elements consistent visual, aural,  
even tactile (e.g., portable device vibrator cadences) cues that one  
might almost call branding elements to ensure that emergency alerts  
have a degree of consistency across all media. Otherwise we risk  
letting diversity deteriorate into confusion.

The Australians have made an interesting foray in that direction with  
their Standard Emergency Warning Signal (SEWS) basically a standard  
sounder that can be used consistently over broadcast, wireless,  
wireline and even acoustical (siren and public address) delivery  
systems. However they havent tried yet to set a comparable standard  
in the visual or other domains.

Last year the FCCs cellular alerting advisory committee (the CMSAAC)  
took a few first steps toward designing a consistent user experience  
for a basic text-messaging interface.

But as we start talking about digital television and HD radio and the  
things that lie beyond them, were going to need to bring some real  
world-class user-interface expertise to bear alongside our enormous  
pool of transmission engineering experience.

The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) provides a rich standard data  
payload that can be presented hopefully consistently over all media,  
broadcast and otherwise. But the details of how best to present that  
richer message are still to be determined and require immediate  
skilled attention.