Questions that DataDENT regularly hears from our national partners include “how do we strengthen capacity to use data?” and “how do we improve data quality?” DataDENT’s answer to each of these questions is to start with understanding the desires, needs, and challenges of the people engaged in National Nutrition Information Systems – including data users and data producers.
DataDENT brings a human-centered design (HCD) mindset to our work strengthening nutrition data value chains. There are many ways to approach HCD but according to one of the field’s founders there are four key guiding principles:
- People-centered: Empathize with people. Focus on them and their context in order to create things that are appropriate for and usable by them.
- Understand and solve the right problems: Engage people to identify design problems, the root causes of those problems and aim to solve the underlying fundamental issues.
- Everything is a system: Recognize that everything is interconnected.
- Do iterative work: Continually prototype, test, and make small refinements to solutions based on frequent user engagement and feedback.
HCD is used across disciplines to develop products, services, environments, policies, programs, organizations and ways of engagement. Public health applications include the design of nutrition programs and information systems. As a field HCD offers a range of skills and tools to foster empathy for, generate ideas with, and receive and implement constructive feedback from target users.
How does DataDENT apply Human Centered Design (HCD)?
DataDENT embraces systems thinking, using the nutrition data value chain to guide us as we integrate HCD elements throughout our work. For example, in Ethiopia we are addressing concerns about multisector administrative data quality by interviewing people engaged at different points along the data value chain. We want to understand the needs and challenges of the people who collect data but also the needs and challenges of the people who select and define the indicators (data prioritization) and those who are using the data.
To shape our multisector strategic planning and nutrition data literacy activities, we are developing personas of data users and data producers across different sectors that draw from interactions with colleagues in Ethiopia, Nigeria and the Data for Nutrition Community of Practice. Personas are fictional characters developed from data collected from multiple people. They highlight differences in needs, experience, behaviors, and goals across different types of users. We will refer to these personas throughout our work process in order to design a range of outputs with content and formats that can actually be used by our target audiences to strengthen data coordination and improve data literacy.
HCD puts an emphasis on usability of solutions. For DataDENT this means designing outputs that reflect how they will be used. For example, when we worked with Nigerian colleagues to design the Health Sector Recommendations for Nutrition Indicators Collected Nationally in Nigeria, we included indicator-specific recommendations in two formats. One section was organized by topic and a second section included the same recommendations organized by data source. The latter was included for people participating in planning and review meetings for specific surveys or administrative data systems.
It can be challenging to embrace the core HCD principles of iteration in the face of tight timelines and budgets. However, DataDENT is committed to being intentional in how we put people at the center of our work and in sharing our challenges and successes with the broader nutrition community.
To learn more, follow us on LinkedIn & X and share your own experiences with or questions about applying an HCD lens to nutrition information systems through the Data for Nutrition Community of Practice.