Designed a tool for users to view and export demographic, housing, and displacement risk data, driving impactful equity conversations.
Project Overview
The Equitable Development Data Explorer (EDDE) is a responsive web application required by Local Law 78 of 2021. It aims to add awareness to racial impacts in New York City’s urban planning process.
The EDDE gives the general public access to explore and export housing affordability, displacement, and racial equity data of New York City. This allows policy-makers, communities, and advocates to proactively address equity-related impacts that land use proposals may have on neighborhoods.
This case study focuses on the MVP release of the application.
Scope
End-to-end design, Responsive Web Application
Role
UX Research, UI Design, Interaction Design
Team
2 UX/UI Designers, 1 Product Manager, 4 Engineers, 1 QA Analyst, 2 SMEs, cross-agency stakeholders
Duration
4 months (Dec 2021- April 2022)
Problem
Context for the problem space
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New York City follows an as-of-right development process. This means that if a land-owner wanted to make changes to their property (ex. add an extra floor, add a pool), as long as the change is within their neighborhood's zoning regulations, they don't need extra approvals.
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If the changes break the neighborhood’s zoning regulations (ex. building a high-rise building in a neighborhood that only has one to two family homes), then it will need to go through New York City’s Uniform Land Use Review (ULURP) process.
Gaps in the process
Old Process
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To start the ULURP process, an applicant submits various documents like a site plan. Once a submission is complete, it starts the ULURP process and goes through a series of reviews and public approvals.
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However, this process failed to consider the potential impacts on displacement, demographics, and housing a new construction project may have.
New Process:
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In July 2021, lawmakers passed Local Law 78, adding a Racial Equity Report to the ULURP process. This mandated submission of data on:
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Demographic
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Housing
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Quality of life
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Displacement
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With this new update to the process, NYC property owners needed an accessible way to get the information required to conduct racial impact studies and submit Racial Equity Reports.
Business goals and user needs
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Our business goals and product requirements were directly laid out by Local Law 78:
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Develop an interactive tool that provides data on specific categories (demographic conditions, household economic security, quality of life, etc.) at different geographic boundaries
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Break down datasets by race and Hispanic origin
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Provide a displacement risk index
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However, we wanted to make sure to focus on what our goal was for our future users:
To empower property owners (applicants) by providing necessary data in an accessible and understandable way
Research
To understand existing design patterns for this type of application, we conducted an external audit and analyzed two applications released by government agencies in the country. We also viewed similar map apps like Google Maps.
Several UI patterns we identified were:
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Interactive map with selectable geographic areas
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Data visualization in choropleth maps and graphs
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Address search bar
Neighborhood Change and Displacement Pressure in Los Angeles
from the City of Los Angeles
Housing and Household Composition Community Profile from the Boston Planning and Development Agency
Ideation
To start brainstorming on the project, I started sketching possible design solutions. Here are the beginnings of several screens in the mobile version of the EDDE.
Application Overview
The application is separated into Community Data and Displacement Risk Data, each with their own respective datasets that can be exported. I was primarily responsible for designing all aspects of Community Data (web and mobile) and the Export feature for both parts. I worked closely with my co-designer to ensure parity for all features within the app.
The Community Data side of the tool contains demographic, housing, and quality of life information displayed in tables. These datasets are broken down by neighborhood and race and ethnicity (whenever data is available).
Design Solutions & Iteration
Minimize clutter without creating additional friction
To minimize visual clutter in the mobile experience, all navigation points were placed in a two-tiered hamburger. However, this solution lessened discoverability of the key next step in the user's journey, needing an alternate solution.
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Viewing data in responsive Data Tables
The Data Table pages were essential to both the end-user’s user journey and to the subject matter expert and stakeholders. When designing the tables, I had to consider: scannability, accessibility, and data transparency.
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Exporting the data
The Data Export feature allows users to download specific data sets (in .xls) and Community Profiles. These are needed for the Racial Equity Reports required by ULURP. The design pattern of this feature is the same in Web and Mobile.
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What's Next?
Though we were able to meet MVP product requirements, I think more iterations are necessary to improve user experience and usability. A few possible ideas are:
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Address search bar – to lessen the friction for users who are unfamiliar with the administrative boundaries on the map
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Separation of the Community Data and the Displacement Risk Map into different applications – provide distinct users with their own individualized experiences
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Sticky header on the data tables page – provides geographic context when switching between race and Hispanic origin datasets
In November 2022, we continued iterations and added new features. You can view the case study here.