Human-Centered Design Takes Pain Out of Data

When it comes to navigating the CMS data ecosystem, OIT is deploying a creative approach to problem solving to get to the pain points and preferences of CMS employees. Known as “human-centered design,” HCD is a multi-phased process that starts with the people we’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs.

The goal is to keep users’ wants, pain points, and preferences top of mind during every phase of the build process. This, in turn, allows us to build more intuitive, accessible products that will help them better serve our customers. Because users are involved in the solution-finding process, they feel more invested in using it.

“The big difference in using a human-centered design approach is to address the major pain points that frustrate everyone when it comes to navigating our data ecosystem,” says OIT Senior Technical Advisor Rick Lee. “Instead of saying to CMS users, ‘Here is a data subway map tool - go at it,’ we’re saying, ‘Okay, users, help us understand the problems we’re trying to solve and then we can come back and look at ways to solve it.’” 

This effort does not include the development or operationalization of any tools or systems that resolve these pain points, at first. Rather, it seeks to dive deeper into the needs of users and stakeholders. The idea is to come away with a better understanding of the root causes of the pain so solutions can be developed that best solve the problems. 

The initial fact-finding phase of the process encompassed multiple interviews with 66 CMS employees who use data frequently in late March and April. To ensure the capture of a cross-section of user needs and pain points, participants included engineers, data scientists, and business stakeholders. 

“The methodology of the research was limited, at first, to open interviews with participants with care taken to detach technical topics (such as issues with individual systems or tools) from issues inherent to the data contained within these systems,” said Brooks Bennett, HCD Consultant. “In other words, we did not seek to define issues related to EDL, IDR, CCW, Tableau or any other underlying technologies. We aimed solely to understand the gaps that exist that serve as barriers to a more data driven organization.” 

The results validated some long-standing assumptions about frequent pain points CMS employees are experiencing when it comes to finding, accessing, and using data, including:

• Many do not know what data is available to them and where it is located.
• Users often look to access data in a warehouse where they know someone and not on business needs. 
• Many feel there is too much data and their ability to access it is restricted by resources and available time.
• Many also say it is “difficult to be innovative” with CMS data because of a pay-to-play access model.
• Better communications are needed around what data is available in what system and improved data education across the enterprise.
• More than half of the respondents see a need for a dedicated, enterprise data-focused group to oversee how data is accessed and distributed. 
• Forty percent of the participants see the need for a centralized data inventory that provides up-to-date information of all database systems, fields, tools, and ownership. The inventory should be an easy-to-find, plain language listing of different data sources, organized by domain, intended uses, and how they differ.

“One of the key takeaways that we took out of this is that there’s a thirst for a unified data strategy,” Lee said. “That’s significant because one of the cultural things that we deal with at CMS is that we operate very much in silos. We build things that are unique to the specific problems that we must solve, and we often lose sight of the fact that there are issues that need to be centered at the enterprise level. If we hadn’t done this activity, we wouldn’t have the data to tell us that.”

Bennett added: “I came into this assuming that the major need was, ‘just give me access’ to data and getting it out there. But it was more about getting the right data. People want to know what they are requesting the access to, what are they spinning their wheels to get access to.” 

So now that the validation process is complete and we have a better understanding of what users are feeling about data, what are the next steps?

“Some resolutions to address these data pain points are already underway throughout CMS, including the development of knowledge bases and channels where employees can better access data that they don’t have, as well as market research that the broader data community may want to move forward with,” Lee said. 

“The next step for us is presenting these results back to the broader community to make some determinations about next steps and advancing the process as transparently as we can without generating bias. We’re sharing the raw data with everyone who wants to see it. And we’re trying to make this as collaborative and as enterprise wide as possible.”

For more information on how OIT is deploying HCD methodology, go to the #cms-data-community Slack channel or email Rick Lee at rick.lee@cms.hhs.gov.