Tracking COVID-19

From closing schools, to stay at home orders, to evictions moratoriums, public policy will have an impact on the spread of the COVID-19 virus and its consequences. Legislation and government programs are being proposed on a daily basis at the local, state and federal level. It is a huge challenge to track the status of these bills. Similarly, legislators need to know what policy is in circulation, so they can quickly benchmark good practices, address current needs, and avoid duplicate efforts. Researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health started a database of the dates state passed policies to facilitate global research on the impact of policy on public health and economic outcomes.

As a UX Consultant for the team, I worked to ensure that all target users were being considered, and to consult with members of each target audience in each detail of the web application. During my consultation, I discovered the four main target users (researchers, policymakers, journalists, and concerned citizens), conducted ethnographic interviews with those stakeholders, ran usability tests of the website prototype, and designed a user interface of the final website.