The government was required to publish an environmental impact statement for this LNG terminal outlining potential impacts to local fishermen.
How would you find a copy?
Designing a specialized search platform
Finding the Needle: UX Research for Specialized Search.
NEPAccess makes millions of pages of environmental planning documents searchable for everyone—from agency staff to community members. Stakeholder interviews with the working group surfaced project goals and constraints; usability testing showed how people really search, shifting the product from a complex, developer‑centered tool to a simpler experience with cards, filters, and clearer information scent.
Project Summary
Project name
NEPAccess.org
Organization
The Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona.
Goal
Make government environmental policy decisions more efficient by creating a specialized search portal to make millions of pages of environmental planning documents accessible and usable.
My role
Sole UX researcher and UI designer
Team
Developers and an interdisciplinary team of data scientists, machine-learning experts, environmental and social scientists, public policy experts, lawyers, and students.
Design tools
- Moderated useability testing / jobs to be done interviews
- Pencil & paper to sketch ideas
- Balsamic and Draw.io for diagraming and wireframes,
- Figma for mockups and prototypes
- Photoshop
Technology
ReactJS, SQL database, Lucene search engine, Zoom.us, WordPress
The challenge
The developer’s first playground screen
The outcome
Search page design informed by user research
Contents
Phase 1: Discovery: Understanding the problem space
Stakeholder interviews
A series of high-profile environmental disasters in the 1960s led congress to unanimously pass the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969. Since then, NEPA has generated over 40,000 environmental impact statements, containing millions of pages of critical scientific analyses.
What happened to these lost documents?
There was no internet in 1969. This data has been largely inaccessible due to data silos, lack of structure, and ineffective retrieval systems. Existing search options like Google and government websites were inadequate for user needs.
Why this matters
Infrastructure projects often face “wicked” problems, complex social and environmental issues that are multilayered and have no simple solution. But, we can make better decisions by referencing past history, all findable in one place.
“The problem is just finding documents. Just the fact that they’re so huge…It can be really challenging to navigate them and get to the information that you need.”
–Project leader
Phase 1: Discovery: Understanding the context
Competitor research
Despite perceptions among some NEPA practitioners, who were used to their work-arounds, a competition review of US government sites revealed that there was no significant competition. NEPAccess would fill a unique gap in the market for an comprehensive, unbiased, one-stop-shop for accessing historical environmental data.
Phase 1: Discovery: Communicating the problem
The explainer video
To communicate the complexity of the problem to administrators and funders, I helped illustrate a 5-minute video explaining the problems we confronted.
Phase 1: Discovery: Understanding the users
Personas and user journey
Anticipated user groups include: lawyers, government agencies, industry, environmental consultants, scientists, academic researchers, and community members.
User journey: How people find NEPA documents now
First step. To experience a NEPA search first-hand, I put myself in the scenario of a person wanting to learn the science behind a controversial mine whose name they’d heard on the news.
My hypothesis: Designing for the average citizen would also help make the site more usable for more professional users.
Phase 2: Empathy: How would people use this?
User testing
Initially uncertain about user needs, developers first placed all the database information on a live staging site for testing. My role involved translating developer concepts into user-friendly models.
To gain user insights, I conducted walkthrough usability interviews on zoom and recorded people searching on the live staging site.
First, I asked participants to recall a time when they searched for similar information, and to speak their thoughts aloud as they did so.
Later, I reviewed the videos and logged detailed interactions in an online spreadsheet that I could share with the the team.
First developer’s screen
We started from square one. I started with this black testing screen below–the result of a year’s work on the database. The team cheered at the first demo when the system found “Rosemont” along with that mine’s draft and final documents.
We decided to use this as a starting point for the staging site.
User research questions
Context
What are people trying to accomplish with these documents?
Analyze workflow
How do they currently find this information?
Find opportunities
How could we save them time and money in how they do this?
How could the experience be better?
How will people use it?
What advanced search features will people use? And how? (important)
Search Behavior
Will users search for single known documents or browse to explore related documents?
Sample user test A
Too many options in all the wrong places
The looks on these faces say it all–a search box cluttered with options causes visual confusion. Too many kinds of search create cognitive overload. Here, there were six.
Sample user test B
This director of an environmental law center couldn’t find the “full text search” option. Of course only we knew what a “default search” was. You had to click on that link to toggle to a full text search. Who would know this without providing “information scent?”
- He also had trouble evaluating search results in a table format and finding related documents.
- We created a list of keyboard modifiers to replace advanced search.
Phase 3: Design
Communicating user research
Summary of user testing results
Initial user tests revealed a stark contrast between developer-centric design and user expectations. While developers favored complex search options and table formats, users craved simplicity and intuitive navigation.
These sessions revealed key insights…
- Users strongly preferred a simple, Google-like search functionality.
- A card format was favored over tables for improved readability and visual grouping of related documents and projects
The findings led to significant design changes…
- We simplified the interface, hiding advanced search behind a single smart search box.
- moved options to a sidebar filter familiar from e-commerce and library sites.
- replaced advanced search with keyboard modifiers
- implemented a card-within-card format for better grouping and scanning of information. This also allowed showing the time sequence.
The scientists on the team were used to spreadsheets and tables are easy to code. But, users found a digital “card” format for search results easier to understand—it grouped related items like traditional library card catalogs.
During a crucial all-team meeting, I proposed what looked to developers like a radical pivot, but these concepts were supported by the research above.
From system logic to user thinking
Addressing Team Concerns
After my presentation, there was pushback from developers.
The team worried about…
- making major design decisions based on a limited number of user interviews.
- whether they could afford the time and developer costs for continuous changes and testing.
- an assumption that most of their users were fairly tech-savvy, potentially not needing simplified interfaces.
In response, I emphasized that..
- qualitative insights did not need large data sets (Nielsen’s 5-8 users reveal 85% of usability issues)
- their return on investment in technology is improved with UX
- designing for accessibility has been shown to help everyone, even “tech-savvy” users.
The Resolution
The moderator tabled the questions so the team could discuss the new ideas off-line for the next all-team meeting in two weeks.
UX and developers reach agreement
After discussion among themselves, the team unanimously agreed to these design pivots.
This design not only improved user satisfaction, but unexpectedly enhanced the platform’s value–users began to browse for related projects within a topic, wanting to learn how others solved similar problems–very difficult to do previously.
Phase 4: Evaluation
Impact
Metrics
User testing Participants: I interviewed over 30 people from 6 different personas or user groups.
5,500
active users
3,013
searches
816
registered users
78,000
page views
8,743
Engaged sessions
12,909
downloads
Estimated success rate: Considering a download as a conversion, there were 4.3 downloads for every search performed, a 430% success rate. People were finding what they looked for.
Phase4: Evaluation
Testimonials from users
These were some responses from a user survey. All of them validated the concept.
How much time or money do you think using NEPAccess saved you? Just a quick estimate, if possible.
NEPAccess saved me probably at least 50 hours of time trying to track down all the information!
NEPAccess provided me with the ability to look at NEPA documents I would never have access to or never be able to find. Its utility is almost invaluable.
Please describe how NEPAccess helped you.
It is nearly impossible to find old NEPA documents online, even the agency with whom you may be currently working doesn’t have access to all their own NEPA documents. Examples of what has been done including approach, methods, and wording is a huge time saver.
I was able to ask a scientific question about how citizen science data are used in EISs (from NEPA) that would not have been made possible any other way.
Where will you go for the information you are seeking while NEPAccess is unavailable?
Will try Google again (to little avail)
I don’t know. I suspect the research I am curious about just simply won’t get done.
I do not think that what I was looking for is available any other way. It’s not practical to do manual searches of hundreds or thousands of EISs.
Phase 4: Evaluation
Learnings
- User preference for simplicity: Users strongly preferred a simple, Google-like search functionality over complex options. The design was simplified to allow users to focus on their search tasks rather than understanding the UI.
- Card format choice over tables: A card format was adopted instead, offering improved readability, visual grouping, enhanced hierarchy, and clear time sequences.
- Comprehensive project view: Users wanted to find related documents within projects and browse other projects to learn from solutions that others have used. This created an institutional memory.
- Universal Design Approach: Both expert users and common citizens faced similar psychological obstacles when using the interface, emphasizing the need for a universally accessible design.
- Alignment with Government Recommendations: In 2024, the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued a report to Congress that aligned with NEPAccess’s proposals for improving NEPA efficiency through data science and UX design.
These findings from usability tests resulted in significant design changes showing that improved accessibility and usability of a large data repository, supporting better decision-making in environmental policy and infrastructure planning.
Future plans
As the project was paused in 2024 due to a funding gap, these are sample pages.
Home page
Search page
