1. RESULTS
METHODS
RECOMMENDATIONS
User-­‐‑Centered
Design:
Techniques
for
Improving
Public
Health
– Seattle
&
King
County’s
Website
Toni
Sarge,
MPHc
CONTACT
INFORMATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABSTRACT
Public Health
Seattle & King County
1
2
3
5
4
• Public Health - Seattle & King County’s (PHSKC) website
is an important tool that residents access for a plethora
of health related information.
• PHSKC realized that the website was not meeting
communications standards and sought
recommendations for improvement. PHSKC launched a
plan to use a user-centered design (UCD) process to
improve the website.
• UCD is a process that seeks a comprehensive
understanding of users and their needs. In this case,
users are all people visiting the Public Health website.
• While UCD has its roots in the tech sector, its
philosophies mirror best practices in public health
• My task: use UCD to identify user personas and provide
recommendations to inform content organization and
layout of the new website.
1
3
2
4
Toni Sarge sarge.toni@gmail.com 408-892-8918
I created a specific UCD activity called a
*card sort and did a case study at a
local clinic to see how parents were
using the website to gather information
for their children and families.
*Try a card sort with the supplies in the folder on the
side panel
Examples of results yielded from the user survey:
• Users were overwhelmed by the amount of text and
information on both the homepage and lower level
pages
• 20% of survey respondents said they access health
information in at least 2 languages.
The variety of methods that I used over the course of six
months led to feedback, results and information that I
consolidated into succinct recommendations. Examples of
recommendations include:
Special
thanks
to
Lindsay
Bosslet,
Faon O’Connor
and
the
entire
PHSKC
Communications
and
Web
team.
Thank
you
also
to
my
advisor
Peter
House
and
to
our
partner
Anthrotech.
Qualitative research with Google
Analytics to understand the big picture
of how our website was being used.
I reviewed help emails and website
search history to better understand
what our users were struggling with.
I created a user survey that was
featured on the website homepage
which allowed me to gather specific
qualitative and quantitative data
regarding:
• User tasks and goals
• User behaviors and attitudes
• Satisfaction with the website
• User demographics
Examples of user personas identified as result of UCD process:
Research
Planning
AnalysisDesign
Testing
Evaluation
USER
Top Pages
Time
spent on
page
Number
of page
views
Jul ‘15-
Jan ‘16
Q2.How often do you visit the Public
Health - Seattle & King County
website (kingcounty.gov/health)?
(n=135)
Create an archive or library for data, program and
grant information that is no longer current
Put actions and services such as “How do I…?” and
“Apply for…” front and center on the homepage
Make contact information for staff easier to find for
users
Reduce time spent on homepage by updating
homepage layout
Avoid organizing the content based on program or
department, and instead think about how outside
users and the community think of what we do
PHSKC will compare website traffic before and after the
recommendations were implemented. Though PHSKC will
not have these answers until the end of 2016 my research
showed how the practice of developing products with real
users in mind is essential to an effective design and a
necessary component of equitable public health practice.
Moving from a
crowded, text heavy
homepage to a layout
similar to the King
County homepage.
Heat map using zip
code data from survey
shows distribution of
responses from
around the county.
CONCLUSION