The Commons dashboard had a problem: bounce rates and average time spent on the site for mobile users were under a minute. It’s clear the mobile site was inaccessible, and mobile-first design was not a priority in the site’s initial design. It was my job to fix that.

Mobilizing access to criminal justice data.

Internal Audit

I conducted an audit of the current mobile site to create an inventory of potential usability issues. After doing so, I worked with my team to prioritize the most pressing usability issues, which we would tackle as part of this MVP effort.

01

In some cases, improving the mobile experience meant utilizing established patterns in mobile sites:

  • Implement a collapsible navigation menu for core page links

  • Design responsive layouts for text and image content

  • Define hierarchy of page controls for mobile

02

Mobile Patterns

Desktop experience is intuitive, while mobile UX could be improved

  • Data organization into “dimensions” was easy to navigate by users, but mobile interactions needed to be refined

  • New map UX is accessible for desktop, but “messy” on mobile

More information around data to builds trust

  • Users looked for context around data to be able to answer their questions and trust the data

  • Users appreciated UI for when data isn’t available

Give users options to engage with data in new ways

  • Users looked for options to visualize data in multiple ways

  • Users shared that they don’t always need to view data over time in a line chart, and would like to see different chart options

Outcomes

Once the design changes were implemented, usability research was conducted to determine their impact.

The results indicated that the site was easy to read, navigate, and engage with. ✅ Mission accomplished.

Metrics

🚀 Boosted mobile traffic to 50% of all traffic

03

⏱️ Increased engaged session duration

📉 Decreased bounce rates

My part in making Commons

Commons Police

Launching a new platform with the same values of transparency and accountability

See Project

Disproportionality

Equipping users with insights about outcomes and representation

See Project