Data Commons

An open data sharing repository for all organizational data.

Product Management, Product Strategy, User Research, User Experience Design

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post-thumb As an operating foundation, Morris Animal Foundation created and managed a lot of data. This was most true for the flagship Golden Retriever Lifetime Study with over 10 million data points. When I started, the foundation had a data sharing platform but was not seeing usage in the way they had hoped.

We conducted user research on the active users of the platform to help validate our theory that our self-serve dataset generator that let users select the rows they wanted was not an ideal user interface. We also realized that our internal scientists were supporting most external researcher by creating individual, custom cuts of the data that were used only once.

To capitalize on the work already being done and to serve our users better, we restructured the way we delivered data and relaunched Data Commons with a whole new interface. This new model let users find pre-made data cuts so they were saved the tedious effort of creating each one they wanted by themselves. We traded the full control for convenience and our users responded extremely positively.

I was able to help design this new pattern for data sharing, refining the wireframes and components, while also product managing the eventual build of the features.

Registrations on the site increased dramatically by 61% as did downloads of data, and we were able to continue releasing new features and data in an iterative way to meet the users evolving needs.

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