Making it easy to find
the correct data

First impression is everything

We were impressed with their ambition. We were nervous with their proposed timeline for creating the initial beta versions of the Ohio State University Data Commons. They thought “smaller scope” meant including less data. The biggest thing on our mind wasn’t the stack of data; it was the machine learning algorithms. These would take time.

The project timeline was only a month. That didn’t give us, or anybody, time to program a machine learning algorithm that could perform the task well with any amount of data.

After brainstorming with the client, we decided to design and develop UI/UX in a month, but we couldn’t complete a machine-learning algorithm. That said, we could definitely create a clever lookalike to impress the university reps who would be approving the professors’ pitch. We could use autocomplete for the time being so it "looked right."

There was no way that machine learning could be avoided forever; the entire project depended on it. But this group of bold professors didn’t need the entire thing to work right now. They just needed something that gave the idea it was working on a small scale, so they could impress their bosses and get greenlit. Deadlines are real. Let’s build something in a month.

Big ideas happen in tight teams

You can't fake some things. One of those was the privacy settings of datasets submitted to the app. Some researchers prefer open access, and others prefer requested access. We went through the client “wants” and whittled them down to “needs.” By identifying the most important parts of the project, we were able to strategize what should be done during the one-month sprint.

Having completed this strategy, we applied it to our designs as well. For example, submitted datasets would not be reviewed by AI during the beta phase. They would be reviewed by actual human beings. Therefore we designed a simple submission process that called for only essential information, limiting other additions.

We continued to design prototypes and bounce them off the client for feedback. Our design team worked with Ohio State’s development team and...it looked off. They’re data guys. They don’t think about fonts. Fortunately we had plenty of time to set everything right before the big day, but we learned something: If you can get a small team of designers and developers to work together, and not independently, your projects will turn out better.