Dynamic Soils Hub Application – Horizon Team USDA/NRCS
Lead Sr. Product Designer/CX team
The USDA's Dynamic Soils Data App is a pioneering platform that seamlessly integrates multiple sources of soil information into a single, interactive interface. Unlike traditional static reports, it offers real-time, dynamic visualization capabilities, helping users—such as farmers, land managers, and researchers—to explore soil properties across various scales and locations. By combining data and scientific modeling, the platform helps users create endless meaningful maps and interactive tools limited only by their imagination, supporting informed land use decisions.
A project to create a platform empowering the creation of impactful scientific models to guide land use decisions.
UX Challenge:
The challenge
While the team excelled at developing features, there was a need to shift focus towards a user-centric approach. The challenge was to design an experience that emphasizes what users can accomplish with these features—helping them achieve their goals—rather than just presenting the features themselves. This required moving beyond the traditional role of a designer delivering visual designs to becoming a strategic user experience advisor, partnering with the team in shaping the overall experience of the application.
UX Approach:
To inform the design process, I collaborated closely with a CX researcher and a CX content strategist from my team, who were deployed part-time on this project. Since direct access to end-users was limited by USDA policies, subject matter experts were recruited to participate in user research activities such as interviews, feedback sessions, and co-design sessions, providing valuable insights into workflows and challenges. CX-specific actions included:
Conducting heuristic evaluations of the existing platform to identify usability issues and opportunities.
Working with subject matter experts and stakeholders to create user journey maps and task analysis charts, visualizing workflows and pinpointing pain points.
Facilitating co-design sessions with stakeholders to gather collaborative input and validate design ideas.
Integrating feedback from experts and assessments into iterative design improvements focused on usability and efficiency
Ensuring the platform’s design conformed to USDA design standards and accessibility requirements by aligning with the USDA design guide and utilizing USWDS design kits to meet 508 accessibility standards.
This collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach enabled the development of a user-centered experience that improves usability and task effectiveness by intuitively breaking out workflows that users follow to achieve their results.
Please note that many of the CX-related documents for this project, such as flow diagrams, wireframes, and user journey maps, are restricted by the agency and cannot be publicly shared. This overview provides a high-level summary, but I would be happy to discuss my specific contributions and activities in more detail—please feel free to reach out to learn more.
Results:
The platform’s features and tools have been organized around the typical workflows, steps, and needs of users, simplifying the user flow and making the tool easier to use. The platform now includes a user-friendly interface and workflow that can enable broader audiences to run their own models using USDA's soils data.
A notable example is the Site Risk for Water Quality tool (App/Tool interface), which was assembled using the Dynamic Soils Hub application to build models that access USDA data, allowing users to assess water quality risks based on their own land area selection. You can explore it live here: Site Risk for Water Quality. This powerful platform helps broaden accessibility of important soils information to the public.
USDA 2024 OCIO Impact Award — Recognized as the IT Customer Experience Champion for the Horizon team. This award highlights our success in modernizing USDA technology solutions through the soil science application, which I contributed to as the Lead Product Designer (2023–present).
FPAC FY2023 Chief Operating Officer's Customer Service Award — Awarded to the Horizon team for developing the Nutrient Sensitive Areas Analysis tool, significantly improving conservation planning capabilities. I played a key role on this project as the Lead Product Designer (2023–present).