DATE

Feb - Apr  2020    

MY ROLE

UX Researcher and UX Designer

METHODS& TOOL

User Interview, Usability Testing,

Figma

SUMMARY

Conducting foundational and user research from the discovery phase to redesigning the homepage of the website ( https://data.ontario.ca/) to enhance Ontario's open data catalogue and make the development of data catalogue data-driven and user research-driven, and ultimately providing users with a better experience and helping the government to be more transparent.

This is a project under the umbrella of the Ontario Digital Service and the new page is live.

Emphasize & Research

20 user interviews

30 open data websites

Current Situation

The current Ontario Open Data Catalogue provides Ontarians with thousand of datasets that are generated and maintained by the Ontario Government. However, the homepage of the website does not have a clear IA to direct users after first landing on the website. We identified 3 user types:

1. Ontarians looking for government data | Searchability & Discoverability 
Example question: “What is the highest-paid public servant?”
They may be exploring what data is available and curious about the data catalogue

2. Academics/researchers | Niche Topics & Citability
Example topic: the number of people incarcerated and held in solitary confinement.
They may be trying to compare/analyze data using many different schemas and naming conventions.

3. Developers/business owners | Accessibility & Recency
Example usage: Use Open Data to create a new website/app/service. They may be trying to get data that is updated regularly and can be incorporated into their business.

User Personas & Data Journeys

User Personas and their corresponding data journeys were created based on online research and 20 in-person/ online user interviews.

Heuristic Review

A heuristic review was done for the current version of the website. After discussing with the stakeholders, I got a clearer idea of the original design intention.

Design & Testing

Design Decisions

Based on our user research, best practices for open data catalogue and having organization constraints taken into consideration. I made the following design decisions:

1. Have a welcome message as well as training materials accessible on the homepage to help users understand what is open data catalogue and the scope of it

2. Show categories to help users navigate and explore the website

3. Provide popular searches to show searching trends

4. Allow developers to access API/software related information directly from the homepage

5. Show more detailed information about the featured dataset for more efficient data-seeking

6. Promote the feedback section 

Low-fidelity Prototypes

High-fidelity Prototype

Based on stakeholders' feedback, a combination of the two designs was created in high-fidelity.

The website is designed to have a simple look so that general publics won't be overwhelmed when firstl landing on the page,  but at the meantime it also has all the neccessary information and encourages exploration.  

Usability Testing

Usability tests were planned to validate the redesign and identify any improvements to ensure that there will be no confusion when the user first lands on the website. Due to COVID-19, the entire team had to prioritize other work thus I was not able to complete the tests before my term ends.

Next Steps

Ideally, another round of iteration would happen after usability tests are conducted and feedbacks are gathered. Redesigns of search results and details pages should be followed and things like Researchers' needs can be further addressed.