Center For Disease Control | Division of Adolescent and School Health
School Health Profiles Explorer
Background
I led the UX design for SHPE, using user testing and interviews to guide iterative improvements, integrating feedback to boost usability, and maintaining data integrity while aligning stakeholder expectations.
Problem
Although the site scored highly in our user study, the home page is too overwhelming for new users - it takes them too long to find what they’re looking for and the filtering features aren’t easily spotted by new users.
Role: UX Research & Design | Challenges: Applying feedback, managing stakeholders | Tools: Axure
Identifying pain points & design problem
Current State
The School Health Profiles Explorer (SHPE) is a data visualization application that displays results from a survey completely biannually by teachers and principals around the US. It launched in early 2024, and in the summer of 2024 we completed a user study of the system. We asked ourselves:
How do users find what they’re looking for in this system?
How do they use the navigation features available to them on the home page?
What changes can be made to help reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a task?
Research Results
While most users were happy with the site, there were several pain points identified on the home page:
There is no order to the question cards on the home page
Filtering options are limited and often missed
General confusion over search bar functionality
General confusion over question card functionality
There is no easy way to view all data for a single location
User Study Design
2 Months
15 Participants
3 Parts (Interview, Task, SUS Analysis)
SUS Score: 84.7
Avg task difficulty: 1.8/5
Reducing chaos with order
We added a functional requirement that re-organizes the cards when a topic is selected, aligning the layout with users’ mental models and automatically structuring the information for them.
Current
Proposed
The previous drop-down was quickly ignored by new users because they didn’t notice a large change in the site’s state.
Current
Proposed
Additional Filtering Options
In order to make the home page less overwhelming, we added new filters that would allow users to re-organize the question cards as needed:
To support comparison between teachers’ and principals’ perspectives, we added a user-controlled filter instead of merging datasets
Users found the homepage overwhelming, so we introduced a survey topic sort option to bring clarity while preserving the randomized card layout stakeholders required.
We streamlined data collection by adding a location filter, reducing repetitive selections and helping users identify relevant questions per region.
Highlighting existing filtering options
The tasks in the user study showed that new users did not identify the existing tools when they first entered the site. This led to further confusion over how to find the question they’re looking for, and often even led them to leave the page entirely.
To mitigate this, we pulled out the subtopic selection screens and search bars so that they were more immediately obvious to new users. We also added tooltips to help users identify the information they were seeing.