CASE STUDY · PUBLIC HEALTH · UX RESEARCH
Reframing a Public Health Dashboard from Clarity to Accountability
How discovery research uncovered what makes wastewater data usable in real public health decision-making
SESSIONS
20 (n=7 + n=13)
MY ROLE
Lead User Researcher
ORGANISATION
University of Sheffield
METHODS
Semi-structured interviews |
Prototype think-aloud sessions / design probe | Thematic analysis
Exec Summary
Five things to know before reading further
01
Grounded the problem in real workflows
Combined interviews and design probe sessions (2 phases, n=20) to map how WBE is interpreted and reused across policy, operational, and analytical roles in real-world settings.
02
Reframed WBE as a validation signal
Found WBE was primarily used for cross-signal validation, with trust depending on provenance, consistency, refresh rhythm, and revision visibility.
03
Surface deeper requirements through a probe
Used a rapidly developed prototype (scoped from Phase I) as a design probe to uncover how different public health roles interpret, validate, and act on WBE within multi-stakeholder workflows.
04
Shifted the design goal from clarity to accountability
Breakdowns came from non-self-describing visuals (hidden legends, ambiguous time windows, unlabeled units) and jurisdiction misfit (catchments ≠ accountable geographies).
05
Shifted the design goal from clarity to accountability
Design moved from “make it clearer” to “make it accountable and reusable”, enabling defensible, citable evidence in reporting workflows.
Problem + User Complexity
Foundational research to define how a future WBE dashboard should support trust, interpretation, and action in public health workflows
The problem wasn't simply design a dashboard that showcases WBE data — it is making WBE signal trustworthy inside real decision workflows
An emerging signal without clear operational workflow
WBE showed promise for AMR monitoring, but it was not yet clear how the data could support real public health decisions in practice.
Future design needed more than visual clarity
Existing examples showed data effectively, but did not address the UK-specific workflow, reporting, and accountability needs a deployable dashboard would have to support
Complex, multi-role decision environment
Different public health roles needed different views, levels of detail, and validation cues, making a single generic dashboard approach insufficient
Research need to uncover unspoken user requirements
Stakeholders may not fully articulate their needs upfront, therefore, the study had to surface how people actually interpret, validate, and act on WBE data to guide future design
HOW I FRAME THE STRATEGY
Team first had to understand how WBE fit into complex public-health workflows, then test how people actually interpreted and trusted it in realistic decision contexts: something interviews alone could not reveal
Approach
Two phases: map real workflows first, then probe deeper requirements through a rapidly designed prototype
Phase I · FOUNDATION
Semi-structured interviews
Established baseline workflows, pain points, and expectations before introducing any design. Participants walked through how they access WBE outputs and where the process breaks down.
n = 7 · 45–60 min each
Phase II · DESIGN PROBE
Prototype-anchored think-aloud sessions
Used a rapid prototype as a design probe with scenario-guided tasks across four views. Participants were asked to imagine using the dashboard in their workflow and think aloud. The probe helped surface ambiguous responsibilities, unmet information needs, and design requirements that had not emerged in Phase I.
n=13 · 45–60 min each
Data Synthesis
Hybrid thematic analysis: deductive aims meet emergent sensemaking
Deductive codes aligned with the four research questions;
Inductive codes captured emergent role-specific practices that weren't anticipated.
Used Dovetail to rapidly cluster data, generate initial tags, generate insights, and maintain a structured research repository.
Key Findings
Four insights that shaped the design direction
1
WBE dashboards works best as a concordance-checking tool
Policy workflows combine WBE with established indicators. Divergence gets logged as "watch" items. Briefings reuse figures and exports. The dashboard's job is to make cross-signal comparison fast and defensible — not to stand alone as an alert.
"We use it (WBE) as a signal... it does not typically trigger standalone action."
2
"Clear" charts fail without self-description
Participants stalled even on visually polished views when legends, unit definitions, time windows, and normalisation methods weren't persistent. Clarity is a function of context, not aesthetics. A clean chart without anchored context is uninterpretable under time pressure.
"[It is] not initially clear what the [map] is showing… [it] needs explanation."
3
Accountability is spatial: jurisdiction misfit blocks action
Wastewater catchments rarely align with the administrative or service boundaries teams are responsible for. This creates ambiguity about "whose data is this?" and delays escalation. Crosswalk overlays that translate sensing footprints into accountable geographies aren't an enhancement — they're a prerequisite for use.
"Spatial misfit… creates ambiguity about who the data actually represents."
4
Trust is governance and reproducibility — not usability polish
Users' confidence in the WBE dashboard increases when figures are citable and reproducible. Trust depends on provenance, method transparency, update rhythm, and revision visibility. The target success indicator: moving from pasted screenshots to versioned figure citations with embedded context.
"[I think the design] requests demographic overlays and visual mapping to aid interpretation."
Design Recommendations + Decisions
Four insights that shaped the design direction
Impact + Decision Framing Shift
What actually changed
Optimise for visual clarity and on-screen WBE chart polish
Add more widgets and data views
Pasted screenshots into briefings
Single map view for all users
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Design for accountable, defensible reuse under scrutiny
Role-based entry points that match governance context
Versioned figure citations with embedded provenance
Jurisdiction crosswalk so ownership is legible
As a formative research, the directional impact is a requirements reframing: from visual clarity as the primary design goal, to accountability, reproducibility, and jurisdiction-awareness as first-class requirements.
The study was scoped to analytic transfer, not statistical generalisation. The patterns are strong within the role-targeted sample and across both phases, but would be validated against live reuse behaviours in a production rollout.
NEXT RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Which design features are most likely to increase WBE data reuse in a live dashboard deployment (e.g., versioned exports, revision history, or jurisdiction crosswalks)?
RQ 1
How should dashboards support auditable escalation paths and facilitate cross-team communication?
RQ2