Mapping Information Behaviors to Improve Public Health Access
A UX research case study for a federal public health agency.
Client
Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Role
UX Research
Year
I led a mixed-methods research initiative for a federal health agency to better understand how diverse audiences accessed and interpreted website content. The work focused on identifying needs, behaviors, and barriers to improve usability, accessibility, and content strategy.
~Note: This case study is intentionally high-level to respect federal confidentiality guidelines, highlighting process, learnings, and impact without revealing sensitive information. Thank you for understanding :-).
Quick stats
Methods: IDI, heuristic evaluation, discussion guide development Audiences: Researchers, journalists, public health professionals, general consumers
The Challenge
Public health information only works if people can find it, understand it, and trust it. For this division, the site was built around how the agency was organized, not how people actually look for help.
As the agency’s visibility grew during the pandemic, its website served a broad range of users with varying levels of digital literacy and health knowledge. Key challenges included:
unclear audience differentiation
difficulty locating relevant resources
inconsistent mental models around content organization
limited insights to inform content prioritization and categorization
These gaps made it harder for users to navigate information confidently and for stakeholders to make informed design decisions.
Different audiences, different mental models
Research synthesis · Patterns across how different audiences searched for and understood public health content
Discussion guide development · Built within federal compliance requirements to support structured, repeatable interviews
From fragmented mental models to a shared understanding.
Researchers, journalists, healthcare professionals, and general consumers all arrived at the same site with different vocabularies, different starting questions, and different definitions of what counted as a credible answer. Mapping how each group actually searched — rather than how the agency organized its content — surfaced where the site's structure was working against its users instead of for them.
THE SOLUTION
I led research planning and execution within federal compliance requirements — including stakeholder interviews, heuristic evaluation, and moderated research activities. Insights were synthesized to define clearer audience profiles, inform navigation and content organization, and surface search and information-seeking patterns to guide future usability and engagement improvements.
The research balanced methodological rigor with regulatory constraints, securing OMB approval on first submission.
THE RESULT
The study gave the agency a clearer understanding of who its users actually were and how they looked for information — insight that hadn't existed before in a structured way. Findings supported internal alignment, guided prioritization of usability improvements, and moved the agency toward a more user-centered approach to digital content strategy.
This research gave the agency a foundation it didn't have — a clear, evidence-based picture of who actually uses NCHHSTP's digital resources and how. That foundation now informs ongoing content and IA decisions.
What this project reinforced
Research with expert and lay audiences side by side is humbling. Healthcare professionals, journalists, researchers, and general consumers all came to the same site with completely different vocabularies and expectations — and the site had been built for none of them specifically. The real insight wasn't about usability in the traditional sense. It was about what the structure of information signals about who a site thinks it's for. When that signal is wrong, even highly capable users give up.
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