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Usabilathon 2021:
Social Justice

One-day challenge sponsored by Mitre to research, design, test, iterate and present a solution to support their social justice platform.

Context.

"Social injustice manifests itself in American society in many ways. People of color and other minorities fare worse than their white counterparts in measures of educational achievement, employment opportunities, generational wealth, health outcomes, and more. Data, models, and frameworks can be used to uncover the root cause of these injustices and explore interventions that remove systemic barriers and allow people of all races, creeds, gender identities, sexual orientations, ages, abilities, legal statuses, etc. an equal chance to thrive." (Mitre, 2021)

MITRE created a social justice platform website (sjp.mitre.org) which aims to be a resource for decision-makers by providing data, tools, and framework that address social justice challenges and enabling collaboration on solutions to those challenges.

The challenge.

Enable users to do the following:

  • Upload content that is relevant to the topics being addressed on the site

  • Suggest new content that it is discoverable within the navigation structure of the site for a particular social justice topic

  • Moderate content that is posted

  • Engage in active collaborative work via tools and data available on the site

  • Should invite all types of people to dynamically collaborate!  

Target users.

  • Government Agencies (IRS, FEMA, HUD)

  • A local school board

  • Non-Profit Organization

  • Volunteer/Religious Organizations

  • Data Scientists

​

  • Partner Thinktank Organization

  • Academic Faculty & Students

  • MITRE website administrators

  • Communities impacted by social injustice

The team.

Mary Nichols, Liam Kettle, Brendan Corr, Shuan Chan, Kassidy Simpson

Our Process.

The team got together early Saturday morning, poured some coffee, reviewed the prompt and got to work.

Methods.
Saturday 8:00 AM.
Image of Empathy Map: What do they think and feel: what really counts, major preoccupations, worries 8 aspirations. What do they see: environment, friends, what the market offers. What do they hear: what friends say, what boss says, what influencers say. What do they say and do: attitude in public, appearance, behavior towards others. Pain: fears, frustrations, obstacles. Gain: "wants"/needs, measures of success, obstacles.

Understanding our users.

Rapid Persona: Verbally sketch out personas

 

Rapid Empathy Maps: What our personas see, hear, think. feel, say, does. and pains and gains

​

Rapid Journey Maps: Journey up until solution interception point

User sketches.

  • Academic faculty who is an expert in social justice

  • Loves to share knowledge

  • Has a disability and makes use of assistive technology

  • Employee at MITRE

  • Efficient, clear morals, well read

General user.

Contributor.

Moderator.

  • Junior Policy researcher

  • Not much experience with social justice

Accessibility.

Accessibility is at the core of social justice and the framework for our entire process. Here are the areas we focused on from WCAG. 

Image of WCAG Principles - Perceivable: Can't be invisible to all of their senses.
Image of WCAG Principles - Operable: Interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform.
Image of WCAG Principles - Understandable: Content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding.
Image of WCAG Principles - Robust: Users must be able to access the content as technologies advance.

  • Sufficient color contrast

  • Accessible font size

  • Accessibility for all links/buttons with the keyboard

  • Alternative text for screen readers

  • Simpler language

  • Ex. Changing paragraphs to concise and clear bullet points

  • Compatible with assistive technologies

Design.

Here is our process for generating design ideas and prototyping.

Rose, bud, thorn.

To kick off our design process, we started out doing a Rose, Bud, and Thorn Design Thinking Activity to determine what is working well in the current design, what could use some improvement, and what isn't working. We used post-it notes to come up with ideas.

Image of board with sticky notes.

Rose, Bud, Thorn board.

Up close image of Rose, Bud, Thorn sticky notes.

Rose, Bud, Thorn board.

We then had interviews with subject matter experts to gain deeper insights on our design ideas.

Prototyping.

Image of paper prototype
Image of paper prototype of Contributor Upload Resources. Includes Submission Date, Publication Date, Title, Author, Organization. Summary of contribution. Upload document button. Checkboxes for Dataset, Model, Framework, Other for Resource Type. Link and citation for resource.
Paper prototype image of resources flow.
Image of paper prototype for uploading Insights and status on contributor status.
Solution.

Home page.

Image of home page with added Insights and Resources descriptions.

Problem: no clear definition of insights and resources

Solution: added in definitions for  Insights and Resources so users know the difference between them

Insights.

Image of Resources Page. Left bar has a search box. Underneath there is a header for Research Type where the user can check boxes to filter by Dataset, Model, Framework, Other. Underneath Resource Type is Domains where the user can filter by a set of check boxes such as Demographics, Social Context, Economy, Education, Transportation and Land Use, Physical Infrastructre, Environment, Health, Technology, Justice, Diversity, Workforce, Analysis. On the right two-thirds of the page, R
Image of Insight main page. On left side there is a side bar of key words and the number of times they appear in parentheses. Image of Dashboard, Federal Inclusivity Index Tool, Foresight: an open-source, agent-based model of the health system enabling simulation and visualisation, The Equity Indicator Library serves as a reference tool to advance knowledge and understanding as examples of Insights

Resources.

User view:

Here is the Insights page where the general public can look up information on social justice topics. The insights are tagged with key words so they can be more easily found.

The Resources page is for experts to access and contribute to expert domain knowledge on social justice topics.

On Dashboards in the  Resources page, all users can view topics of interest where they can click a link that leads them to the information and can read a description about the link. Users can also access related insights based off overlapping keywords.

Screen Shot 2022-04-06 at 10.51.03 AM.png

Contribute.

Screen Shot 2022-04-06 at 9.09.38 PM.png

User profile.

Here is where users can access their user profile under the Contribute tab. Users can access their account, messages, submissions, as well as update their photo ID and review recent submissions.

Messages.

Under Messages, users can connect with other subject matter experts over the platform about social justice.

Screen Shot 2022-04-06 at 9.10.25 PM.png

Upload Insights and Resources.

Screen Shot 2022-04-06 at 9.53.15 PM.png

1. The expert contributor can either select Insights or Resources to make a submission.

Screen Shot 2022-04-06 at 10.03.33 PM.png

2. The contributor fills in identifying information.

Screen Shot 2022-04-06 at 10.04.00 PM.png

3. The contributor uploads the title, source, description, IRB number, potential tags and their research file.

Screen Shot 2022-04-06 at 10.04.17 PM.png

4. Contributor reviews their submission details and can either select submit, save for later, or cancel.

Screen Shot 2022-04-06 at 10.04.48 PM.png

Once the contributor selects submit, the submission is under review by a MITRE moderator.

Contributors can then access their submission(s) under the submission tabs.

Screen Shot 2022-04-08 at 11.55.58 AM.png

Moderator view.

Screen Shot 2022-04-08 at 11.59.07 AM.png
Screen Shot 2022-04-08 at 11.59.22 AM.png
Screen Shot 2022-04-08 at 11.59.35 AM.png

After a contributor submits a resource or insight for review, it is sent to a moderator where they may approve, conditionally approve with minor or major approvals, or decline the submission. 

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