A user-centred design and data community

Back when I worked at ONS (Office for National Statistics), I remember looking around, trying to find other interaction designers and user researchers across government who were working on data publishing services.

Since then, I've met (well, via Twitter) a few people working on these kinds of services. Jeremy and Pete in particular have been doing great work, and whenever I chatted to them it felt like we were facing similar challenges. For example, presenting data in user-friendly ways or working with data professionals who aren't used to working with interaction designers.

Luckily for me, Jeremy, Pete and Megan have been working hard on creating a community of user-centred designers, so that people working on these kinds of data services can share design patterns and user research, and organise meet-ups.

If you're interested in learning more about the community, or you'd like to get involved, check out this introductory blog post over on GOV.UK… introducing the user-centred design and data community.

The community is for anyone working on services that collect, analyse, visualise and publish data and applying a user-centred lens to them.

I helped a bit, and the team were kind enough to give me co-author credit on the blog post, but I hope that I can contribute a lot more to this community in future.