Designing the WECA Transport Data Hub
Project overview
The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) is creating a Transport Datahub (TDH) to centralize complex and inconsistent data in a comprehensive Data Service. The project aims to simplify data access, improve user experience, and increase the platform's efficiency and effectiveness. As a Hybrid Service-UX Designer, my role involved leading the user-centered Alpha phase and collaborating with a fellow Service Designer, technical team members, and business stakeholders. I designed and executed experiments to test high-priority hypotheses and riskiest assumptions about the TDH.
Design process
Card Sort and Landscape Review
To understand user mental models, we conducted a card sorting exercise to analyze how they categorize and cluster datasets. I then did a landscape review that provided insights into users' needs, preferences, and expectations. This research identified key patterns, takeaways from similar services, and a content list informing our design decisions later. We also collaborated with data specialists and senior stakeholders to establish technical and business requirements.
Journey Mapping
Next thing was to design a simple journey that alleviates pain points, considers technical constraints and business requirements. By focusing on clear user needs, we simplified the user journey and identified core functionalities for the Alpha tests, which are:
Search and find datasets
Understand data accessibility requirements
Obtain high-level information about data
Preview and/or download datasets to get more information
Prototyping
We decided on designing three main pages for the flow: homepage, search results page, and dataset page. We chose the GOV.UK Design library for its recognizable user experience, accessibility, and responsive design.
then I started sketching wireframes where at first I focused on layouts and the core functionality, and within a couple of iterations, reached a high-fidelity prototype offering a realistic representation of the final product.
Key features included:
Search and find datasets: Categorized datasets by topics, implemented filters and sorting options for search results, and linked related datasets.
Learn more about datasets: Standardized metadata and introduced new properties for improved data understanding.
Clarify data access requirements: Added 'open', 'restricted', or 'external' tags for better access requirement comprehension.
Preview and/or download datasets: Provided a data preview function, enabled dataset downloads and signposting to external datasets, and explored potential data visualization and analysis tool integrations.
User Research
We conducted user research to evaluate how users navigated the prototype, searched and filtered datasets, and developed our understanding about what actions they would take upon accessing the right dataset. This helped us to identify potential tools to be integrated into the catalog in later stages.
We ran eight sessions, and I led the user research analysis by categorising findings into themes, generating actionable insights, and developing a set of clear recommendations for the next stages of the project.
Key Insights and Next Steps
Through our user research and iterative design process, we gathered valuable insights to improve the Transport Data Hub, identifying the following areas for future development:
Refine search functionality to increase accuracy and effectiveness in locating relevant datasets.
Enhance the dataset page to display additional metadata and provide better guidance on dataset usage.
Improve the data preview function by incorporating additional visualization options and interactive features.
Investigate additional integrations with data analysis tools to further support users in extracting value from datasets.
By addressing these insights, the WECA Transport Data Hub project can continue to evolve, ensuring it meets the needs of users and the Combined Authority. The findings and recommendations from the Alpha phase have been documented, setting a strong foundation for the Beta phase, where further design refinements and development will occur.