Discovering and Designing for the Data Visualization Needs of Child Welfare System Professionals Influencing Public Policy

The data information needs of professionals working to shape public policy related to child welfare in the United States are complex. In this paper, we report on our approach to studying these needs to inform the design of a potential tool for accessing the data that would support those professionals. Our study population consisted of professionals concerned with influencing public policy related to the lived experiences of youth who are transitioning out of the foster care system into adulthood. To conduct this study, our process included training a team of student researchers to (1) understand the domain through secondary sources, (2) identify topics to focus on in discovery interviews, (3) conduct the interviews and analyze results to (4) inform the design of a system that would support the work of domain professionals. Our findings indicate that professionals in the child welfare research and policy space are interested in having access to customizable and interactive research support tools that include data visualization as a core functionality and are easy to use for people with limited technical expertise. In particular, these professionals are interested in visualizations of both administrative and lived experience data presented in simple, colorful, and humanized ways with the ability to disaggregate at geographical levels that are meaningful to impacting policy. Future research should include development of the visualization tools identified here and a subsequent usability study to confirm the value of our design recommendations.