Usability testing and design overhaul for a global health data catalog
Global user research informed design and usability updates
I was working a global health research institute that had a public health data catalog as a “public good.” It was curated by a team of data librarians. The catalog was going to be recoded on a new content management system so the management team requested a usability study to improve it for the new system.
My Role: Vision driver, organizer, coach, mentor
Defined goals with stakeholders
Planned and facilitated usability testing
Facilitated ideation session
Created interactive design prototype
What were the usability testing goals?
GHDx is a catalog, curated by a team of professional librarians, of global health studies linking to data and original research artifacts all over the world.
We wanted to learn whether conceptual model of the catalog was well understood globally for browsing and searching.
Research questions
Does the concept of a library catalog resonate with people from different job roles across and cultures?
What are current barriers to finding citations and files/data in GHDx that prevent external researchers from completing their tasks/goals?
What features are the most useful?
Does the terminology and organization of GHDx meet users’ mental models?
Can new users with a background in global or public health find their way around GHDx and perform the same basic tasks as users who have used GHDx before?
Moderated observational study
Previous users of the GHDx were recruited through a list of people that sent in GHDx user inquiries.
2 women / 2 men completed the study from Germany, France, and the USA
1 hour semi-structured interviews with a mix of questions and tasks.
The study was completed in English with a facilitator and a notetaker.
Unmoderated remote study
Ten users were recruited that had a background in public or global health via an online platform called Userlytics to see if users less familiar with the platform would provide different feedback or insights.
Our goal was to get an equal mix of self-identifying genders as well as half from LMICs.
3 women / 4 men successfully completed the study from UK, Spain, India and USA
Ideation
I led a review of the usability findings and facilitated a sketching session to come up with ideas to solve design and usability issues. View FigJam board >
Collaborators were a mix of stakeholders and team members: designer, data librarians, developers.
Image of sketches from the ideation session
Home page design and content changes
The usability testing findings showed that participants had trouble understanding the scope and features of the platform. I updated the copy on the homepage and the navigation labels to disambiguate the global catalog from the organization’s data.
Links to topics were added to give users a sense of what they could search for as well as surface popular topics.
Disclaimers were moved to the footer and the page was reorganized to focus on a streamlined search, which is the core functionality of the tool.
Home page of the site before the usability and feature updates, but after a light brand redesign
Mouse-over navigation menu
Open advanced search accordion
Homepage mockup draft with ideas generated from the user study and ideation session
Search updates
Research participants often missed the right-side filters. And, overall elements were running together without a lot of structure to disambiguate actions and results.
The page was organized with a clear hierarchy of search terms, results, and contextual related searches.
Search facets for filtering were moved to a more traditional spot on the left.
Actions were placed more contextually - e.g. “Export” was changed to “Download results .cvs” and placed directly on top of the results instead of on top of the search filters.
Data sources were added to the search results for scanning.
Search results “before” usability testing and ideation.
Search had the richest amount of feedback so it was the core experience I focused on in the design updates.
Navigation and content changes
Based on the usability testing, participants unfamiliar with the organization didn’t recognize acronyms and “library” or organization-centric terms.
Series and systems became “Dataset series”
Acronyms were spelled out in headings and wherever possible
APIs became “APIs for 2023 Goalkeepers Report”
The global catalog and internal IHME data were further disambiguated in the menu
Data availability was a term to let users know if the link to the data source was attached. I changed the name to reflect a more direct representation of the concept.
Navigation menu before the ideation session
Drop-down menu before re-labeling
Consolidated navigation from design ideation
“before” ideation showing library-centric language
Country page updates
The country page was originally organized by geographic region and by income level. The organization wasn’t consistent and that slowed some people down in finding the correct country. Also, one participant mentioned they would like to search for more than one country at a time on this page. A simple A-Z system was implemented for the directory as well as the ability to add more than once search term.
Tab 1 - shows a directory of all world countries
Tab 2 - shows countries by a map
Library record update for improved scanning and hierarchy (right side)
