Notes on Designing a Frontline Safety Job Aid

When people are under pressure, they do not pause to think back to a training they sat through in the past. They recognize cues. This matters the most in safety contexts, where time, attention and working memory may be compromised all at once.

For the last 5 years, I've been trying to crack the code for training frontline workers. Frontline workers are employees whose primary role is to deliver services, products, or care directly at the point where the organization meets the real world. Honestly, a lot of what we currently talk about in the corporate learning design industry does not accommodate or truly consider this type of work.

Frontline workers typically:

• Have limited time to stop and “look things up”

• Work through noise, interruptions, and shifting priorities

• Can rely more on cues, routines, and tools than on memory

• Carry higher physical, safety, or service risk than back-office roles

They aren't sitting in front of computers. The time they do spend in training is few and far between. And time is precious. Also - they work HARD and they are tired.

That’s why for frontline workers, especially in safety-critical situations, job aids are not “nice to have.” They are a must.

So when I saw this design challenge, it felt like a good excuse to spend some time practicing what designing a good ol' fashioned job aid is actually like by joining this month’s Elearning Designer’s Academy challenge.

I also wanted to get back into skills maintenance outside of my regular work.

So here it is, folks....

The challenge:

As an instructional designer for Tacomazing, you’ve been tasked to create a printed, easy to reference job aid for posting next to all on-board fire extinguishers. (elearningacademy.io 2026)

Design Rationale (At a Glance)

Why a job aid instead of training?

Because in emergencies, people don’t retrieve information from memory. They recognize cues. A job aid placed at the point of use supports action when time, attention, and working memory are limited.

Why one task only?

Fire extinguishers are used rarely and under stress. Narrowing the scope to a single task reduces cognitive load and shortens decision time.

Why icons plus text?

Visual cues are processed faster than text and help bridge language and literacy differences. Text reinforces meaning; icons support recognition if reading fails.

Why four separate language versions?

Combining languages increases visual clutter and slows scanning. Separate versions preserve readability while keeping structure consistent across languages.

Why emphasize when not to use the extinguisher?

Extinguishers are for small, incipient fires. Evacuation is a valid outcome and protects workers from injury.

My design approach:

Between the playful style guide (complete with tacos—oh, how I miss good tacos) and the temptation to make something visually striking, it would have been easy to over-index on aesthetics. But safety work has a way of clarifying priorities. Practical matters more than pretty.

The goal was never to create a “nice” poster. The goal was to design a safety aid that could quietly do its job when everything else was going wrong. That meant being ruthless about simplicity and realistic about context.

I started by holding a meeting with my imaginary fire safety SME and doing a short review of safety-focused job aid research.

The core questions were simple.

Who is this for?

Frontline food truck workers. Not safety professionals. Not firefighters. People working in confined kitchens, often multitasking, sometimes new or temporary, possibly working in a second or third language, and operating near open flames. In other words: people under stress making split-second decisions.

What is the goal?

Enable the worker to make the correct decision quickly: use the extinguisher safely if appropriate, or leave safely without hesitation.

What problem is it solving?

This isn’t just about knowing how to use a fire extinguisher. It’s about lowering reaction time, clarifying limits, and preventing people from staying too long in unsafe situations.

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Job aid design is a tried and true method so no need for me to start from scratch. I looked into best practices and found the following:

• Focus on a single task

• Be clear and concise

• Organise in the exact sequence of actions

• Think about accessibility and placement

• Test and verify

The human brain processes images faster than text. Visual cues will help workers grasp the steps at a glance, which is critical in an emergency. By using a consistent visual for each step, workers can internalize the sequence (muscle memory) more effectively.

And finally, as I am no stranger to designing for a multilingual workforce, my imaginary SME and I decided to create a multilingual package that promotes inclusion and safety. (I used machine translation for this, but if I were designing the job aid for actual use I would not rely on machine translation alone). Since we are designing for multiple languages, including Arabic (RTL), the layout has to be simple and readable from up to 4 feet away no matter the language.

Sources:

• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) – Portable Fire Extinguishers: Fire Extinguisher Use (eTool guidance) osha.gov

• U.S. Fire Administration (FEMA) – Fire and Life Safety Pictographs (recommendation and testing of pictogram-based safety messages) usfa.fema.gov

• Legault, N. (2015, approx.). Job Aid Design: Tips and Tricks. Articulate E-Learning Heroes Community Blog. Retrieved from https://community.articulate.com/blog/articles/job-aid-design-tips-and-tricks/1116489

• Whatfix – How to Create Effective Job Aids (general job aid design best practices) whatfix.com

So what looks like a simple poster (that is similar to many others you can find with a quick google search) still requires some deeper analysis. Take a look at the posters below: