Designing for Disaster: Social Software Use in Times of Crisis

Abstract

Using the London Bombings of 7 July 2005 as a case study, this paper illustrates the need for sociotechnical interventions in systems design. By employing Actor Network Theory the author makes visible the active participants and technologies within the ecosystems of social software. Such visiblity provides insight to the designer seeking to optimize communication systems in the wake of disaster. Guidelines for improving systems and user interfaces based on disaster scenarios are described.