Texas Water Data Hub
Making Texas Water Data More Findable and Accessible
Overview
I helped design and build a statewide water data hub alongside data scientists and developers. This project is in collaboration with the Internet of Water as we worked to make Texas water data more F.A.I.R. (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).
Role
Timeline
12 months
Methods
Affinity mapping, prototyping, usability testing
Team
Lead Designer, Data Scientist, UX/UI Designer (me), Project Manager, Frontend Developer, Backend Developer
Research
Interviews & Synthesis
We conducted 15 hours of virtual in-context research with 11 water data users and 4 subject matter experts. We took over 1,100 utterances and transferred them to a Miro Board for affinity mapping. We combined utterances into underlying themes, reframed themes into questions, and answered those questions by offering actionable solutions. After establishing key insights and connecting them to our users, we were able to build a solid foundation for our design criteria.
Problem
Texas water data is fragmented and locked away, making it difficult to understand, value, and use.
Ideate
MVP Matrix
We hopped in a Miro board again and brainstormed on different solutions based on our design criteria. We also asked our stakeholders about their visions for the hub and added that to the board as well. We color coded the ideas into three categories based on relative abstractness and I put them onto an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) matrix. By organizing our ideas two different ways, were we able to prioritize our goals and prepare for a phased rollout.
Service Blueprint
I turned our user journeys into a service blueprint that showed how steps were supported by our open-sourced data management system. This helped us understand where in the user flow things could be improved, including back-end support and system capabilities.
Design
Lo-Fi Wireframes
I created digital-to-paper wireframes to quickly test the functionality of the main page and how it integrated with basic site features of our data management system. This helped us figure out how to increase the intuitiveness of our custom main page and how we could upgrade basic site features to implement design solutions.
Solution
Create an intuitive system to index, document, search, and access Texas water data.
