NOAA's Drought.gov
Making Drought Intelligence Actionable
I helped transform Drought.gov from a sprawling collection of scientific data, tools, and resources into a decision-support platform designed around how people understand and respond to drought.
Timeline
2015
Role
Communications Designer
My Focus
Research · Interaction Design · Visual Design · User Testing · Accessibility
Collaborators
NEON scientists and field staff, development and content teams
From data repository to decision-support platform
Drought.gov brought together hundreds of pages, datasets, maps, tools, and resources from across the drought community. But the experience reflected how the information was produced rather than how people needed to use it.
Research showed that audiences ranging from researchers and water managers to educators and the public shared a common challenge: understanding what drought conditions meant for their location and what to do next.
Summary
Led UX strategy and design for the redesign of the nation’s drought information platform.
Reorganized complex climate information around user needs rather than agency and scientific structures.
Established a scalable design system and reusable patterns for a growing network of content, tools, and partners.
Product strategy
The opportunity was bigger than reorganizing a website. We needed to shift the product from publishing drought information to helping people make sense of it.
That meant designing around the questions people were trying to answer, not the information NOAA had to publish.
Organize around user needs
Structure the experience around what people need to understand and do.
Connect data to context
Help users understand what drought data means for their location and situation.
Create paths to action
Connect understanding to relevant tools, resources, and next steps.
Project Highlights
I worked on many more projects during my time at NOAA; if you're interested in hearing about any of them, reach out to me.
Designing around decisions, not data
Need
Drought.gov had grown around scientific datasets, programs, and organizational structures. Users arrived with very different levels of expertise, but they generally weren't looking for a particular dataset. They wanted to understand what was happening, what it meant for them, and where to go next.
Goal
Reframe the platform around the decisions people were trying to make and create a shared product direction across scientists, stakeholders, and the design and development team.
Role
I led user and stakeholder research, analyzed site behavior, and facilitated Value Proposition exercises to map user goals, pain points, and organizational priorities.
What We Learned
Research revealed three priorities:
Understand conditions quickly
Give people a clear picture of what is happening.
Find what's relevant
Connect information to location, audience, and situation.
Move from information to action
Create clearer pathways from conditions to forecasts, impacts, tools, and resources.
Turning climate information into clear pathways
Need
Users weren't necessarily overwhelmed by the amount of drought information. Testing showed they struggled to understand how information related, interpret technical visualizations, and determine where to go next.
Goal
Create an experience that helped people move from finding information → understanding conditions → taking action, without removing the scientific depth expert users needed.
Role
I translated research into a task-based information architecture and interaction patterns, then tested the redesigned experience with public users, researchers, and stakeholders.
What We Learned
Testing drove specific interaction patterns across the platform:
Navigate with confidence
Clearer hierarchy, "On This Page" navigation, predictable cards and task-based pathways.
Understand the science
Simpler legends and labels, plain-language context, clearer visualization hierarchy and visible methodology.
Know what to do next
More prominent alerts, local information, relevant resources, and pathways into deeper data.
Result
The redesigned experience made drought information easier to discover, interpret, and act on while preserving access to the scientific detail required by expert audiences.
Building a foundation that could grow
Need
Drought.gov wasn't a static website. New content, tools, datasets, partner contributions, and regional information would continue to be added, making one-off page designs impossible to maintain.
Goal
Create a reusable visual and interaction system that could keep the experience consistent as the platform expanded.
Role
I developed the visual language using the U.S. Web Design System as a foundation and partnered with developers to establish reusable components, responsive patterns, accessibility standards, and implementation guidance.
What We Learned
Make controls visible
Finding: Users often missed the legend below the map.
Change: Moved the legend alongside the map so filters remained visible during exploration.
Make filtering immediate
Finding: Users expected layer checkboxes to update the map instantly.
Change: Removed the additional Apply action and made filtering responsive to selections.
Make data easier to reach
Finding: Researchers struggled to find the path from mapped measurements to downloadable data.
Change: Introduced a prominent Browse Data action directly alongside the map.
Result
The design system gave teams a reusable foundation for creating new content and experiences while maintaining consistency across the growing platform.
Making Climate Information Actionable
The final experience connected field locations, sampling designs, measurements, and data access in one interface, helping researchers understand not only what NEON measured, but where and how those measurements were collected.
Outcomes
Decision-oriented experience
A common interaction model that could support terrestrial and aquatic sites with very different sampling designs.
Clearer information architecture
Organized complex climate information around user needs instead of organizational structures.
Scalable design system
Created reusable patterns and standards that supported consistent growth across the platform.
Shared product direction
Aligned scientists, developers, content teams, and stakeholders around a common vision for Drought.gov
Takeaways
Complexity isn’t always the problem
People can work with sophisticated information when the experience gives them enough structure and context to understand it.
Design the connections, not just the pieces
A useful product connects data, explanations, tools, and next steps into a coherent path rather than optimizing each independently.
Product strategy creates alignment
For multidisciplinary teams, a shared understanding of who the product serves and what it helps them accomplish makes individual design decisions much easier.
A principle I still design by
Clarity comes from structure, not less information. People don’t necessarily need less information. They need the right context, relationships, and pathways through it.
NOAA's Drought.gov
Making Drought Intelligence Actionable
I helped transform Drought.gov from a sprawling collection of scientific data, tools, and resources into a decision-support platform designed around how people understand and respond to drought.
Timeline
2015
Role
Communications Designer
My Focus
Research · Interaction Design · Visual Design · User Testing · Accessibility
Collaborators
NEON scientists and field staff, development and content teams
From data repository to decision-support platform
Drought.gov brought together hundreds of pages, datasets, maps, tools, and resources from across the drought community. But the experience reflected how the information was produced rather than how people needed to use it.
Research showed that audiences ranging from researchers and water managers to educators and the public shared a common challenge: understanding what drought conditions meant for their location and what to do next.
Summary
Led UX strategy and design for the redesign of the nation’s drought information platform.
Reorganized complex climate information around user needs rather than agency and scientific structures.
Established a scalable design system and reusable patterns for a growing network of content, tools, and partners.
Product strategy
The opportunity was bigger than reorganizing a website. We needed to shift the product from publishing drought information to helping people make sense of it.
That meant designing around the questions people were trying to answer, not the information NOAA had to publish.
Organize around user needs
Structure the experience around what people need to understand and do.
Connect data to context
Help users understand what drought data means for their location and situation.
Create paths to action
Connect understanding to relevant tools, resources, and next steps.
Project Highlights
I worked on many more projects during my time at NOAA; if you're interested in hearing about any of them, reach out to me.
Designing around decisions, not data
Need
Drought.gov had grown around scientific datasets, programs, and organizational structures. Users arrived with very different levels of expertise, but they generally weren't looking for a particular dataset. They wanted to understand what was happening, what it meant for them, and where to go next.
Goal
Reframe the platform around the decisions people were trying to make and create a shared product direction across scientists, stakeholders, and the design and development team.
Role
I led user and stakeholder research, analyzed site behavior, and facilitated Value Proposition exercises to map user goals, pain points, and organizational priorities.
What We Learned
Research revealed three priorities:
Understand conditions quickly
Give people a clear picture of what is happening.
Find what's relevant
Connect information to location, audience, and situation.
Move from information to action
Create clearer pathways from conditions to forecasts, impacts, tools, and resources.
Turning climate information into clear pathways
Need
Users weren't necessarily overwhelmed by the amount of drought information. Testing showed they struggled to understand how information related, interpret technical visualizations, and determine where to go next.
Goal
Create an experience that helped people move from finding information → understanding conditions → taking action, without removing the scientific depth expert users needed.
Role
I translated research into a task-based information architecture and interaction patterns, then tested the redesigned experience with public users, researchers, and stakeholders.
What We Learned
Testing drove specific interaction patterns across the platform:
Navigate with confidence
Clearer hierarchy, "On This Page" navigation, predictable cards and task-based pathways.
Understand the science
Simpler legends and labels, plain-language context, clearer visualization hierarchy and visible methodology.
Know what to do next
More prominent alerts, local information, relevant resources, and pathways into deeper data.
Result
The redesigned experience made drought information easier to discover, interpret, and act on while preserving access to the scientific detail required by expert audiences.
Building a foundation that could grow
Need
Drought.gov wasn't a static website. New content, tools, datasets, partner contributions, and regional information would continue to be added, making one-off page designs impossible to maintain.
Goal
Create a reusable visual and interaction system that could keep the experience consistent as the platform expanded.
Role
I developed the visual language using the U.S. Web Design System as a foundation and partnered with developers to establish reusable components, responsive patterns, accessibility standards, and implementation guidance.
What We Learned
Make controls visible
Finding: Users often missed the legend below the map.
Change: Moved the legend alongside the map so filters remained visible during exploration.
Make filtering immediate
Finding: Users expected layer checkboxes to update the map instantly.
Change: Removed the additional Apply action and made filtering responsive to selections.
Make data easier to reach
Finding: Researchers struggled to find the path from mapped measurements to downloadable data.
Change: Introduced a prominent Browse Data action directly alongside the map.
Result
The design system gave teams a reusable foundation for creating new content and experiences while maintaining consistency across the growing platform.
Making Climate Information Actionable
The final experience connected field locations, sampling designs, measurements, and data access in one interface, helping researchers understand not only what NEON measured, but where and how those measurements were collected.
Outcomes
Decision-oriented experience
A common interaction model that could support terrestrial and aquatic sites with very different sampling designs.
Clearer information architecture
Organized complex climate information around user needs instead of organizational structures.
Scalable design system
Created reusable patterns and standards that supported consistent growth across the platform.
Shared product direction
Aligned scientists, developers, content teams, and stakeholders around a common vision for Drought.gov
Takeaways
Complexity isn’t always the problem
People can work with sophisticated information when the experience gives them enough structure and context to understand it.
Design the connections, not just the pieces
A useful product connects data, explanations, tools, and next steps into a coherent path rather than optimizing each independently.
Product strategy creates alignment
For multidisciplinary teams, a shared understanding of who the product serves and what it helps them accomplish makes individual design decisions much easier.
A principle I still design by
Clarity comes from structure, not less information. People don’t necessarily need less information. They need the right context, relationships, and pathways through it.
NOAA's Drought.gov
Making Drought Intelligence Actionable
I helped transform Drought.gov from a sprawling collection of scientific data, tools, and resources into a decision-support platform designed around how people understand and respond to drought.
Timeline
2015
Role
Communications Designer
My Focus
Research · Interaction Design · Visual Design · User Testing · Accessibility
Collaborators
NEON scientists and field staff, development and content teams
From data repository to decision-support platform
Drought.gov brought together hundreds of pages, datasets, maps, tools, and resources from across the drought community. But the experience reflected how the information was produced rather than how people needed to use it.
Research showed that audiences ranging from researchers and water managers to educators and the public shared a common challenge: understanding what drought conditions meant for their location and what to do next.
Summary
Led UX strategy and design for the redesign of the nation’s drought information platform.
Reorganized complex climate information around user needs rather than agency and scientific structures.
Established a scalable design system and reusable patterns for a growing network of content, tools, and partners.
Product strategy
The opportunity was bigger than reorganizing a website. We needed to shift the product from publishing drought information to helping people make sense of it.
That meant designing around the questions people were trying to answer, not the information NOAA had to publish.
Organize around user needs
Structure the experience around what people need to understand and do.
Connect data to context
Help users understand what drought data means for their location and situation.
Create paths to action
Connect understanding to relevant tools, resources, and next steps.
Project Highlights
I worked on many more projects during my time at NOAA; if you're interested in hearing about any of them, reach out to me.
Designing around decisions, not data
Need
Drought.gov had grown around scientific datasets, programs, and organizational structures. Users arrived with very different levels of expertise, but they generally weren't looking for a particular dataset. They wanted to understand what was happening, what it meant for them, and where to go next.
Goal
Reframe the platform around the decisions people were trying to make and create a shared product direction across scientists, stakeholders, and the design and development team.
Role
I led user and stakeholder research, analyzed site behavior, and facilitated Value Proposition exercises to map user goals, pain points, and organizational priorities.
What We Learned
Research revealed three priorities:
Understand conditions quickly
Give people a clear picture of what is happening.
Find what's relevant
Connect information to location, audience, and situation.
Move from information to action
Create clearer pathways from conditions to forecasts, impacts, tools, and resources.
Turning climate information into clear pathways
Need
Users weren't necessarily overwhelmed by the amount of drought information. Testing showed they struggled to understand how information related, interpret technical visualizations, and determine where to go next.
Goal
Create an experience that helped people move from finding information → understanding conditions → taking action, without removing the scientific depth expert users needed.
Role
I translated research into a task-based information architecture and interaction patterns, then tested the redesigned experience with public users, researchers, and stakeholders.
What We Learned
Testing drove specific interaction patterns across the platform:
Navigate with confidence
Clearer hierarchy, "On This Page" navigation, predictable cards and task-based pathways.
Understand the science
Simpler legends and labels, plain-language context, clearer visualization hierarchy and visible methodology.
Know what to do next
More prominent alerts, local information, relevant resources, and pathways into deeper data.
Result
The redesigned experience made drought information easier to discover, interpret, and act on while preserving access to the scientific detail required by expert audiences.
Building a foundation that could grow
Need
Drought.gov wasn't a static website. New content, tools, datasets, partner contributions, and regional information would continue to be added, making one-off page designs impossible to maintain.
Goal
Create a reusable visual and interaction system that could keep the experience consistent as the platform expanded.
Role
I developed the visual language using the U.S. Web Design System as a foundation and partnered with developers to establish reusable components, responsive patterns, accessibility standards, and implementation guidance.
What We Learned
Make controls visible
Finding: Users often missed the legend below the map.
Change: Moved the legend alongside the map so filters remained visible during exploration.
Make filtering immediate
Finding: Users expected layer checkboxes to update the map instantly.
Change: Removed the additional Apply action and made filtering responsive to selections.
Make data easier to reach
Finding: Researchers struggled to find the path from mapped measurements to downloadable data.
Change: Introduced a prominent Browse Data action directly alongside the map.
Result
The design system gave teams a reusable foundation for creating new content and experiences while maintaining consistency across the growing platform.
Making Climate Information Actionable
The final experience connected field locations, sampling designs, measurements, and data access in one interface, helping researchers understand not only what NEON measured, but where and how those measurements were collected.
Outcomes
Decision-oriented experience
A common interaction model that could support terrestrial and aquatic sites with very different sampling designs.
Clearer information architecture
Organized complex climate information around user needs instead of organizational structures.
Scalable design system
Created reusable patterns and standards that supported consistent growth across the platform.
Shared product direction
Aligned scientists, developers, content teams, and stakeholders around a common vision for Drought.gov
Takeaways
Complexity isn’t always the problem
People can work with sophisticated information when the experience gives them enough structure and context to understand it.
Design the connections, not just the pieces
A useful product connects data, explanations, tools, and next steps into a coherent path rather than optimizing each independently.
Product strategy creates alignment
For multidisciplinary teams, a shared understanding of who the product serves and what it helps them accomplish makes individual design decisions much easier.
A principle I still design by
Clarity comes from structure, not less information. People don’t necessarily need less information. They need the right context, relationships, and pathways through it.
NOAA's Drought.gov
Making Drought Intelligence Actionable
I helped transform Drought.gov from a sprawling collection of scientific data, tools, and resources into a decision-support platform designed around how people understand and respond to drought.
Timeline
2015
Role
Communications Designer
My Focus
Research · Interaction Design · Visual Design · User Testing · Accessibility
Collaborators
NEON scientists and field staff, development and content teams
From data repository to decision-support platform
Drought.gov brought together hundreds of pages, datasets, maps, tools, and resources from across the drought community. But the experience reflected how the information was produced rather than how people needed to use it.
Research showed that audiences ranging from researchers and water managers to educators and the public shared a common challenge: understanding what drought conditions meant for their location and what to do next.
Summary
Led UX strategy and design for the redesign of the nation’s drought information platform.
Reorganized complex climate information around user needs rather than agency and scientific structures.
Established a scalable design system and reusable patterns for a growing network of content, tools, and partners.
Product strategy
The opportunity was bigger than reorganizing a website. We needed to shift the product from publishing drought information to helping people make sense of it.
That meant designing around the questions people were trying to answer, not the information NOAA had to publish.
Organize around user needs
Structure the experience around what people need to understand and do.
Connect data to context
Help users understand what drought data means for their location and situation.
Create paths to action
Connect understanding to relevant tools, resources, and next steps.
Project Highlights
I worked on many more projects during my time at NOAA; if you're interested in hearing about any of them, reach out to me.
Designing around decisions, not data
Need
Drought.gov had grown around scientific datasets, programs, and organizational structures. Users arrived with very different levels of expertise, but they generally weren't looking for a particular dataset. They wanted to understand what was happening, what it meant for them, and where to go next.
Goal
Reframe the platform around the decisions people were trying to make and create a shared product direction across scientists, stakeholders, and the design and development team.
Role
I led user and stakeholder research, analyzed site behavior, and facilitated Value Proposition exercises to map user goals, pain points, and organizational priorities.
What We Learned
Research revealed three priorities:
Understand conditions quickly
Give people a clear picture of what is happening.
Find what's relevant
Connect information to location, audience, and situation.
Move from information to action
Create clearer pathways from conditions to forecasts, impacts, tools, and resources.
Turning climate information into clear pathways
Need
Users weren't necessarily overwhelmed by the amount of drought information. Testing showed they struggled to understand how information related, interpret technical visualizations, and determine where to go next.
Goal
Create an experience that helped people move from finding information → understanding conditions → taking action, without removing the scientific depth expert users needed.
Role
I translated research into a task-based information architecture and interaction patterns, then tested the redesigned experience with public users, researchers, and stakeholders.
What We Learned
Testing drove specific interaction patterns across the platform:
Navigate with confidence
Clearer hierarchy, "On This Page" navigation, predictable cards and task-based pathways.
Understand the science
Simpler legends and labels, plain-language context, clearer visualization hierarchy and visible methodology.
Know what to do next
More prominent alerts, local information, relevant resources, and pathways into deeper data.
Result
The redesigned experience made drought information easier to discover, interpret, and act on while preserving access to the scientific detail required by expert audiences.
Building a foundation that could grow
Need
Drought.gov wasn't a static website. New content, tools, datasets, partner contributions, and regional information would continue to be added, making one-off page designs impossible to maintain.
Goal
Create a reusable visual and interaction system that could keep the experience consistent as the platform expanded.
Role
I developed the visual language using the U.S. Web Design System as a foundation and partnered with developers to establish reusable components, responsive patterns, accessibility standards, and implementation guidance.
What We Learned
Make controls visible
Finding: Users often missed the legend below the map.
Change: Moved the legend alongside the map so filters remained visible during exploration.
Make filtering immediate
Finding: Users expected layer checkboxes to update the map instantly.
Change: Removed the additional Apply action and made filtering responsive to selections.
Make data easier to reach
Finding: Researchers struggled to find the path from mapped measurements to downloadable data.
Change: Introduced a prominent Browse Data action directly alongside the map.
Result
The design system gave teams a reusable foundation for creating new content and experiences while maintaining consistency across the growing platform.
Making Climate Information Actionable
The final experience connected field locations, sampling designs, measurements, and data access in one interface, helping researchers understand not only what NEON measured, but where and how those measurements were collected.
Outcomes
Decision-oriented experience
A common interaction model that could support terrestrial and aquatic sites with very different sampling designs.
Clearer information architecture
Organized complex climate information around user needs instead of organizational structures.
Scalable design system
Created reusable patterns and standards that supported consistent growth across the platform.
Shared product direction
Aligned scientists, developers, content teams, and stakeholders around a common vision for Drought.gov
Takeaways
Complexity isn’t always the problem
People can work with sophisticated information when the experience gives them enough structure and context to understand it.
Design the connections, not just the pieces
A useful product connects data, explanations, tools, and next steps into a coherent path rather than optimizing each independently.
Product strategy creates alignment
For multidisciplinary teams, a shared understanding of who the product serves and what it helps them accomplish makes individual design decisions much easier.
A principle I still design by
Clarity comes from structure, not less information. People don’t necessarily need less information. They need the right context, relationships, and pathways through it.