Integrating Usability Testing into the Design and Development of Data Dissemination Platform for U.S. Official Statistics

Abstract

The U.S. Census Bureau serves as the leading source of statistical data about the nation's people and economy, and has the responsibility of disseminating the data for public use. To accomplish this mission, an initiative was undertaken to develop a platform that makes the data easier to find, use, and access the official statistical data effectively and efficiently. In this paper, we will describe a human-centered approach to designing and developing the platform, in particular, the process of incremental improvement in search functionality and search results presentation through usability evaluation. The process involves user research, expert review of design concept, low-fidelity wireframe usability testing, high-fidelity usability evaluation, and collaboration between the government agency and academic institutions. Our progress made so far in this project demonstrates the soundness of this human-centered approach.