Command – Vicky Wang

OVERVIEW

Primer lets organizations quickly explore and utilize the world’s exponentially growing sources of text-based information. Powered by Primer’s NLP, Command enables organizations to monitor, analyze, and respond to rapidly unfolding events in real time.

ROLE

Product Designer

RESPONSIBILITIES

UI/UX Design, Product Vision, Product Strategy

WHY WE BUILD COMMAND

In today’s complex world, real-time situational awareness is critical for the public and private sector to effectively respond to major world events, such as armed conflict, natural disasters, terror and cyber attacks, or geopolitical unrest. Organizations need to make timely decisions regarding the security of their people, assets, and critical infrastructure, as well as ensure operational continuity. Yet when a crisis strikes, threat assessment and operational intelligence teams are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information coming from news and social media — and that information can evolve from one minute to the next.

“Military commanders and business leaders live in an increasingly complex information environment, which is a morass of equal parts champagne and swill. Rapidly sorting through fact and fiction and pertinent information to enable time-sensitive decisions is both more important and more difficult.”

– Tony Thomas, Former Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command

USER PERSONA

EXPLORATIONS

User personas establish the demographics and external attributes, whereas archetypes establishes mindsets and behaviral patterns. By exploring archetypes, we are able to better pinpoint user needs and consolidate features in a line of products.

We also explored the work flow of each archetype and see where our product lies in the cycle.

OUTCOME

Create a Monitor

Monitor Real-time Situation

Explore Visual Media

Auto-generate Situation Report

WHAT'S COMING NEXT: SHARE

Sharing monitor is one of the most anticipated features we are working on right now. It is the #1 most requested feature from both <public sector> and Commercial customers.

Problem

Teams of analysts and operators are often monitoring the same situation or they reuse others' monitor terms to create their own.

Today, in order for a team to see the same monitor view, one user has to copy the search terms, send it to another person, then that person creates a new monitor. When terms get updated, the monitors become out of sync. In addition, if a teammate creates a relevant set of terms and another person wants to adapt it for their topic area, that same copy and paste process needs to happen. This makes it a big hassle for teams and doesn’t create network effects where the more licenses of Command that you have, the better the experience.

Customer Quotes

"We have a Google doc that we update almost daily where we update terms and then paste it into our boolean search. This list is collaborated on by others." (Code for Africa)

"If they are monitoring the same person they’ll want to look at the same monitor. <user 1> and <user 2> on the Protective Intel team are looking at the same execs." (<a large tech company>)

"Can you share the query with other people? Have 1 moderator that owns the query and modifies it? [Today,] one person has a word doc with booleans and that’s just shared around." (<an intelligence center>)

“We often have to use one system/seat in any command post configuration, so logging out, but keeping a query active, then having another user log in to the same system and resume the same query would be ideal." (<a public sector organization>)

Success Metrics