The Goal
Redesign Healthdata.gov to improve public trust through data sharing and inform HHS and external decision-making. I worked with the Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO).
The Problem
The OCDO did not know who their users were or current use cases for the website. This was compounded by lack of existing qualitative or quantitative data about who the users might be. The “American public” is a huge swath of people who may or may not currently be engaging with the platform
The Opportunity
Lead a re-design for Healthdata.gov that leans on understanding user needs and priorities first before building. Help OCDO see benefits of user research to open data work.
The Process
Defining the project scope
For the first two weeks, I led a discovery sprint with my team of two engineers. I worked with them to identify key research questions we needed to answer and identified applicable research methods for answering those questions.
Establishing research plan
After getting a clearer understanding of our research questions, I facilitated a stakeholder mapping workshop to understand key informed and involved stakeholders. I also curated all of the user research protocol materials.
Analyzing quantitative data
Given that the folks that we had permission to speak with were a small subset of users, we needed existing qualitative data (emails asking for help on the platform) for insight into potential use cases and existing issues. The data demonstrated that many of the individuals emailing for assistance were government agencies or health agencies that needed to access the Community Profile report to inform their COVI policy decisions.
We conducted 5 listening sessions and synthezed their responses by first coding their responses and then completing an affinity mapping exercise where we identified key insights, ideas, and illuminating quotes from respondents.
Understanding existing use cases
This first workshop was intended to help us understand how self-identified users (a small working group of external folks engaging with COVD datasets for their own applications) engaged with Healthdata.gov. After listing and sharing their experiences, participants ranked their top 3 use cases and grouped similar topics.