MI Lighthouse

Field: Public Health
Type: Internship
Project Overview
During the pandemic, the Michigan health department faced challenges tracking vaccine data. MI Umbrella developed MI Lighthouse to aid public health, offering authorized officials visualizations for monitoring vaccine uptake, outbreak investigation, and resource allocation.
However, the platform's functionality is restricted solely to COVID-19, with limited features for vaccine campaign decision making.
My Contributions
Conduct qualitative research, analyzing interview data, generate wireframe, low fidelity and high fidelity prototype

The goal of this project was to:
1. Understand how users thought about their current vaccine campaign process.
2. Re-design MI Lighthouse platform integrated with other vaccine series data.

Phase 1
User research
In total, we conducted interviews with 20 stakeholders in the public health field across Michigan. Recognizing out lack of familiarity with the daily tasks of health officers, we opted for a two-round interview approach.
User Interview R1
Tailoring our approach to different roles, we developed specific protocols for health manager and epidemiologist. In the initial round of interview, we aim to understand their current workflows to gain insight into potential pain points.
Phase 2
Design
With a bunch of wants and needs from our uses. How do we sift through them to identify needs that fall within our design scrop, and how do we determine which functions require a higher priority?
Need Prioritizing
By creating a MoSCoW map, we list all needs from local health department, decide what are the functions that we must and might want to include, which also help us define the problem scope. Then based on the discussion with Project Manager and Teach lead, we use the stakeholder map to prioritize what are some function we want to include in the MVP version.
At this time, we decide to prioritize implementing key functions including color-coded maps, demographic data visualization, and PDF download capability for the MPV version as recognizing their importance.
Sketches

Wireframing &
Low fidelity
As transitioned to wireframing, we prioritized the map and dashboard pages, conduct a crazy 8 session and from into different groups for rapid design. This approach allowed us to brainstorm various layouts that could be developed into low-fidelity prototypes.
As moving forward, we create more detailed content on each page and even a little bit high fidelity. At this time, we main focus on two lay out, one is with the top bar with filters on the right side bar and the other have a fixed sidebar on the left.
Upon developing both options, we found it challenging to decide which style to proceed with for following reasons:

Maintaining consistency in data analysis across tab sizes poses a challenge due to varying levels of analysis required for the map and data analysis pages.
However, certain elements must remain fixed , such as the switch between the map and data pages, or toggling between different vaccines.

So, instead of committing to either design, we opted to take some time to explore other works related to maps and dashboards to gain additional insights and see if we can make adjustment to come up with a new style and move forward to high-fidelity.
Final Design
‍

The current design of the map page integrates elements from previous versions, featuring a fixed left bar for switching among metrics , map and other navigations we might include in later version.
Meanwhile, filters have been relocated to the top bar, as they are not displayed on the metrics page.This layout ensures that users primarily interact with the right panel, utilizing the left menu bar solely for page navigation or accessing account settings.

The metrics pages contain a difference in different size of screen.
The reason we include an overview in the monitor screen, which is the size most local health department officer interact with is that it can provide a quick idea of how the trends look like in that graph. But we still need more testing to verify whether this difference will lead to confusion.

The metrics pages contain a difference in different size of screen.
The reason we include an overview in the monitor screen, which is the size most local health department officer interact with is that it can provide a quick idea of how the trends look like in that graph. But we still need more testing to verify whether this difference will lead to confusion.

Reflection
We are still working on iterating the high fidelity pages and waited. to conduct user testing for. feedback! During this process, here are some points I noticed:

Think out of the scope
At the beginning of the design stage, our team engages in a "crazy 8" exercise, involving all members regardless of their roles. This exercise offers insights into diverse design perspectives, especially those from developers, who present layouts distinct from designers'. I've personally found it challenging to break out from a specific scope, resulting in similar designs. However, hearing input from individuals not directly involved in the project, or from those with different roles, might be beneficial. Their perspectives enable us to break out of the scope and approach design challenges from fresh angles.

Balance users need and real word situation
As a designer, I recognize that the real world is constantly evolving, and users may express a multitude of needs during interviews. Even though these insights are valuable, it's essential to filter and prioritize them based on the project scope and timeline to focus on those that will have the greatest impact. Trying to design of everyone might lead to design for no one. No single product can address every user need comprehensively, delving deeper into a specific scope allows for a more profound understanding and enables the creation of solutions that resonate more deeply with users.

Veronica Ma @ 2024
LINKEDIN