Pacific Salmon Foundation

Designing for the User

In a complex area research and development is hard to implement as small actionable changes add up to significant technical debt over time.

Oftentimes, end users need to access multiple reports and access points to track metrics across various pacific salmonid populations. With this time devoted to hunting down correct metrics and figures, there wasn't enough time to work on the research, leaving problems like biological status, and salmon population numbers crucially under researched.

Critical Question

*How can we design a better user experience for goverments to make informed choice on projects that could impact future salmon stocks?

Some of my design contributions can be found in the list below:

1. A new user pattern implementation proposal
2. A complete redesign of how data is interpreted in client side graphs
3. Revising Iconography and Color systems to lessen technical debt across the tool
4. A ground-up rework of the Regional Overviews section that links with an externally developed site (State of Pacific Salmon).

Impact

Through written user tests and a full process analysis intervention we implemented a way for scientists to get their data clearer, faster by creating stricter more actionable impovements in the platofmrs visual design and clarity in user widgets. These improvements were internally tested and found to have a 9.46 second overall reduction time in fact finding, boosting user clarity and platform growth.

Above is a structured before and after of the user flow. By reducing the overhead in the option select, we can allow for a greater range of expression in how the data is structured visually.

Process

My proposed user Experience intervention was to better layout the information in a parallel developed feature: the horizontal omni menu which allowed all queries related to the phenotype to be searched in parallel. Users having access to all information after funneling helped center the user while giving users the ability to save data to a seperate tab created a quick way to catalogue and tabulate information without endlessly looping the UX pattern of retrival.

An extended iconset for readabilitiy

To standardize the icon set we set the icon sizing to a firm 36x36 square with a white border to optimize counting icons that were clustered together. In the icon redesign me and my senior team looked to group icons by color and key as well as redesigning the icons to read better at a low resolution.

Backloading text for better cognition

Regional Overviews were designed as a way to extend the tool capitalizing on a user's need to have quick easily digestible snapshots that helped relay quick statistics of salmon across all regions without having to do a deep dive. The intention was to situate the user quickly, providing a common narrative to help push past the complex data being presented. The initial designs featured a card system after front loading most of the auxiliary information as charts that pertained to the regions conservation units and its overall biological status.

Internal testing revealed that users were less likely to read the front loaded information, so after some deliberation we simplified and focused data to be more visual. We replaced the introduction text with a card system that highlighted "glance-ability" so users could see immediately the impact across the region on all salmonid species. Across explorations we decided to speculate on more expressive ways of describing how users would interact with the data.

In our final iteration we looked at a funnel system that helped center the user. Similar to the Eames "power of 10", we wanted to give a scope in and out interaction that allowed users to look at status then assess salmon needs through a triage system. We built this system directly into the overviews to give a stronger presence to this extension of the PSE experience that also lays a narrative thread to an experiential status site called State of Salmon .

Smoothing Data for better Understanding

Initially the incoming data showed biostatus as a mess of inflexible charts that created user friction. The information overhead was lengthy and full of jargon, as well as inconsistently formatted which impacted understanding. For the new re-design of biostatus across the tool we used a traffic light system to qualitatively apply an already consistent design pattern so users could recognize between good, moderate, and poor systems at play.

Reframed Question

*How can we influence readers to think about data in two-dimensions?

Biostatus is a fancy way of allowing salmon biologists to get a gist of the over all system health without having all the information on hand to do a deep research dive, it’s useful for allowing researchers to develop a game plan without stranding themselves in endless research and papers.

Our initial understanding was to use a bar chart to quantify interactions along with a trimetric badge (tribadge) to better facilitate dialogue between the different categorization systems. After some research and testing, we began to see faults with the bar chart as users wanted to see more granular information from each individual pressure.

In my redesign, data is sorted and displayed by confidence intervals in a 2D plot prioritizing mapping accuracy in the counted spawning salmon. In which, the variance in counting methods and the confidence intervals enables users to do a deeper dive through positioning the graphed information in 2d space. The flexibility given by providing options into the granular data helps lay-people using the tool to better reference changes in policy from external knowledge bases.

Consolidating the data into a more graphical iteration allowed us to solve problems of granularity and focus, giving researchers the ability to look at data changes over time, rather than observing status health one dimensionally.

Glance Based Information and Prepared Documents

A major point of user friction came from observing other users and their patterns navigating the site. The online portion was fine, but we observed a need for the information to be presented differently as a rapid printout. My team lead came to me to take a speculative look on how users would look at printouts of cogent information within the habitat panel and the biostatus panel.

We created a way for users to obtain crucial information highlighting the "at a glance" principle found in both Biostatus and Regional Overviews. During testing we observed variance in how people used documents to track their thoughts and research. This culminates in a printout that could be assessed rapidly, allowing users to get a definitive top level readout without having to parse through the site.∎