Safety & Health Assessment Portal
Client
Department of Indian Affairs
Role
Product Designer
Year
2019
The Problem
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is responsible for the management and preservation of American Indian and Alaska Native-owned lands, properties, and assets. Their jurisdiction covers over 50 million acres, and without a clear reporting tool, it was difficult for managers to organize, prioritize, and assign jobs within the department.
In the original version of the Safety Condition Assessment Portal (SCAP), jobs were organized by location, which gave managers no information or insight into the severity of the safety issue, where in the country the request was being made, or the progress of the request.
Research
Conducting competitive analysis for a internal niche reporting tool proved to be a challenge. There are not many government agencies that openly share their dashboard UI and from previous experience with government work I don’t believe it would’ve been helpful anyway.
For this project I leaned into dashboard based products on the market, identifying product management tools as a helpful starting point for and products like Google Analytics for key KPI dashboards.
The client’s primary ask was for a better visualization of information and a more practical way to organize, assign, and keep track of jobs within the department, so we developed a simpler design that allowed for managers to do their jobs more efficiently. After collecting feedback from field workers and program managers and conducting user testing with department members, we learned that breaking down projects by price and budget was outside of IA’s scope of work, so we focused on reducing clutter in the next iteration.
Implementation
Using the new design, managers are quickly able to view the reports uploaded by the field inspector and evaluate the severity of the reported safety issues to decide whether to reject or accept new projects. The user-friendly interface and simplified reports have lead to an increase in the number of reported safety issues managers are able to address in a given year, and ultimately support BIA in their mission to improve the safety of American Indians and Alaskan Natives utilizing these properties and assets.
