ZIVA - Civil Protection App

Three questions to the project team

What was the particular challenge of the project from a UX point of view?
People rarely prepare for emergencies when everything is fine. A blackout feels abstract until the lights go out. Flooding feels distant until water reaches the basement. But by then, it may already be too late to charge a power bank, store drinking water, or move important documents upstairs. That was the central UX challenge: the app had to make civil protection relevant before a crisis happens. It needed to feel serious enough to make people act, calm enough not to scare them away, and clear enough to help under pressure. With a structure built around pre-, during-, and after a crisis, personal risk assessment, and checklists, the app translates official civil protection knowledge into small, concrete steps—early enough to make a difference.

What was your personal highlight in the development process? Was there an aha!-moment, was there a low point?
The best moment came quite late in the process. At first, simplification sounded like the obvious answer: shorter texts, clearer labels, fewer choices. But civil protection is tricky. If a flood risk is reduced to a vague label, people may understand the word but not the danger. If it is explained too technically, they may not read it at all. In testing, we kept overshooting in both directions. Every new prototype seemed to fix one problem and create another. Finally, in one of the later versions, it clicked. Users understood the personal risk assessment without feeling overwhelmed: how likely something is, in what timeframe, and with what possible impact. For the first time, it felt simple enough to act on and precise enough to trust.

Where do you see yourself and the project in the next five years?
ZIVA will act as a reliable companion regarding individual crisis preparedness, offering guidance before, during, and after a crisis. The platform will be a place of reference for hazard preparation, alerts, and post-disaster assistance. It will also provide added value through a secure feature for storing personal documents—e.g., insurance papers, IDs, certificates, and other essential records. In five years, ZIVA will have evolved into an interactive app, playfully making this important cause part of everyday life. Our mission is to elevate civil protection, to make it accessible, understandable, and relevant for everyone. By then, the majority of people working in system-critical professions will be familiar with the app and its benefits.