Dashboard user experience for Colorado’s government to gain insight into workforce development.
Dashboard user experience for Colorado’s government to gain insight into workforce development.
Helped CO earn top-3 national rank for using data to fund solutions, called "key" by Gov. Polis.
Helped CO earn top-3 national rank for using data to fund solutions, called “key” by Gov. Polis.
Roles & Responsibilities
Roles & Responsibilities
User Experience & Interface Designer. Conducted user research, designed concepts, made recommendations to stakeholders. Created launch presentation to assist with onboarding.
Sole Designer, worked on a team that included Economists and Public Policy Experts.
Goals & Constraints
Goals & Constraints
This coalition, WORC, tracked and shared Colorado's workforce data with public and private workforce partners, as an effort to create effective public policy. Currently, all data was shared as a newsletter, which didn't enable partners to engage with data – track, compare, apply filters, etc.
Our goal was to create a dashboard for visualizing data, which users could personalize.
This coalition, WORC, tracked and shared Colorado’s workforce data with public and private workforce partners, as an effort to create effective public policy. Currently, all data was shared as a newsletter, which didn’t enable partners to engage with data – track, compare, apply filters, etc.
Our goal was to create a dashboard for visualizing data, which users could personalize.
Research
Research
Learned from Economists about making each graph easily interpretable.
WORC had many relationships with people receiving the newsletter, enabling me to get firsthand insight into our users' needs. There were two groups of users:
“Providers,” who provide skills training and career support, with the goal of improving participant employability, job stability, and wages over time.
“Funders,” who provide grants to training providers, often with a focus on measurable outcomes and return on investment. They needed to demonstrate impact to their own boards and donors.
Learned from Economists about making each graph easily interpretable.
WORC had many relationships with people receiving the newsletter, enabling me to get firsthand insight into our users’ needs. There were two groups of users:
“Providers,” who provide skills training and career support, with the goal of improving participant employability, job stability, and wages over time.
“Funders,” who provide grants to training providers, often with a focus on measurable outcomes and return on investment. They needed to demonstrate impact to their own boards and donors.
Design
Design
Separated each graph into a separate tab, each with an ever-present set of filters, clear and simply-designed key data points, and specific deep analytical capabilities through interaction (clicking or hovering on a graph, etc.).
Enabled partners to view others' workforce data, for comparison and insight. Utilized a bottom toolbar for tracking changes in the graph over time, including a play button to animate the changes.
Added tips to each section, when relevant, and to boxes that appeared on hover. Note, this dashboard was not intended to support mobile use.
Separated each graph into a separate tab, each with an ever-present set of filters, clear and simply-designed key data points, and specific deep analytical capabilities through interaction (clicking or hovering on a graph, etc.).
Enabled partners to view others’ workforce data, for comparison and insight. Utilized a bottom toolbar for tracking changes in the graph over time, including a play button to animate the changes.
Added tips to each section, when relevant, and to boxes that appeared on hover. Note, this dashboard was not intended to support mobile use.
Results
Results
The Governor called out partnerships with select organizations, including the Colorado Lab, as key to building the capacity and expertise of state leaders in advancing the use of evidence to drive smart state investments.
Results for America, a non-profit organization devoted to helping governments use evidence and data to make better decisions gave Colorado its highest designation – as one of the three top states in the nation for building and using evidence and data to drive taxpayer dollars toward proven solutions.
The Governor called out partnerships with select organizations, including the Colorado Lab, as key to building the capacity and expertise of state leaders in advancing the use of evidence to drive smart state investments.
Results for America, a non-profit organization devoted to helping governments use evidence and data to make better decisions gave Colorado its highest designation – as one of the three top states in the nation for building and using evidence and data to drive taxpayer dollars toward proven solutions.
“Alex is great, super-detailed in his review, and with a nice range of easy-to-implement improvements and longer-term ones.”
– Elysia Versen, acting executive director at the Colorado Evaluation & Action Lab (at University of Denver)
“Alex is great, super-detailed in his review, and with a nice range of easy-to-implement improvements and longer-term ones.”
– Elysia Versen, acting executive director at the Colorado Evaluation & Action Lab (at University of Denver)