Getting out of the weeds
A three-week agile design sprint.
I often live in the details and find myself in the weeds when trying to learn new information. In trying to understand federal spending, there are many words and numbers but not necessarily a lot of context. When there is so much information to understand, it can be hard to look at the aerial view — the bigger picture. How might we best help our users to understand complex information, like federal spending? My team and I sought to find out by interviewing a group of young people between 20–35 years old in the US. We asked them what they already know about federal spending; how they like to learn complex information; and what understanding federal spending could help them with. Then we took our user feedback and created a mid-fidelity website prototype to meet their needs.
Discover
Through 15 interviews with people at varying levels of understanding federal spending we got a better idea of how people would like to learn complex information. This group in particular found that digesting information in infographics or short slides in an Instagram post was really helpful for them. I really struggled with how to breakdown the information from our source into digestible pieces like an infographic, but kept being reminded by my team to get out of the weeds and look at the bigger picture. Which was, creating something that was actually fun for users to begin their understanding of federal spending.
After synthesizing our research through affinity mapping and persona creation, we wrote two user stories:
1. As a taxpayer, I want to know government spending information so that I can be a more informed citizen.
2. As a voter, I want to be aware of what a candidate values by their budgeting choices so that I can vote based on my values.
“What we spend shows what we value.”
Define
Our users wanted a way to understand federal spending in digestible sections with common language and visually displayed information. They wanted to connect their new understanding of federal spending with their voting habits, to understand their elected offices stances on budget matters and ultimately vote for people who aligned with their own values. They also wanted to see exactly what areas were being funded, in order to dedicate more of their own money to causes they felt needed donations because they were left out of government funding. Just like I was, our users were in the weeds too so we needed to build a place where they could have an aerial view of federal spending.
Develop
Our solution was to create an interactive map. The map would include information on the federal and state level and would allow users to compare states to get more context on different areas of spending. The minimal approach would leave room to link to further information on the USA Spending website. We also included a page to help users understand who their representatives are and their power over areas of federal spending.
After some user testing, we realized we needed to give our users a little more direction with the content. So we added in labels to show the toggle between federal and state spending and the different sections of the pie chart.
Shown is an image of the prototype before the additional labels were added.
Deliver
Ultimately we created a mid-fidelity website prototype with our features being federal and state spending and resources to learn more about your representatives roles within the budget.
Shown is the feature I worked on within the team. The individual state pages and the comparison between two states. Just click on a state, and the pie chart and info box appear. Click on another and the same thing. Ultimately this feature will help users to learn greater context of federal spending and may even be helpful for people planning moves between states.
Also, Axure is not as scary as it seems. After getting the basics down, it was really fun to see how the layers of interactions worked together to make a prototype look like a website. I almost forgot that it is just a prototype!
All in, this project helped me understand the big picture of complex information and showing it in a way that helps users understand in small chunks before digging into the weeds (and only if they want to). Take a step back to look at the bigger picture, start with the basic pieces, and go from there.
Thanks for reading!