Data Driven Detroit
In 2018, I worked amongst a small group of students at the University of Michigan School of Information to partner with Data Driven Detroit (D3). Our objective was to redesign D3’s digital library of data resources, known as their Toolbox. The end goal of this project and D3’s mission was to make it easier for interested parties to make data-informed decisions about land-use, economic development, and community improvement in Detroit, Michigan.
Our work focused on enhancing the usability and accessibility of the main interface for searching through available data resources. Through user research, we discovered that our work needed to focus on new ways to filter and organize data resources by category and descriptive metadata like location, timeframe, and resource type. In addition, we decided to redesign how individual resources would be presented in the greater list of resources to make each one more descriptive and identifiable (there were over 1,000 resources available in the toolbox).
In the end, a prototype of our new design outperformed previous iterations of D3’s Toolbox, helping users find useful resources more quickly and easily than before.
Scope
User Research
User Experience Design
Prototyping
User Interface Design
Credits
Jessica Andrews, Student Group Member
Jessica Mathis, Student Group Member
Allison Wanderer, Student Group Member
Bob Branch, D3 Partner
Ivoire Morrell, D3 Partner
Noah Urban, D3 Partner
Meghin Mather, D3 Partner
