WCWH: Turning Complex Health Data into Human-Centered Insights

How I researched and redesigned WCWH’s Health Data Reports to make health results more accessible, empathetic, and easy to understand

My Role

  • UX Researcher

    • Competitive analysis

    • Usability testing

  • UX Designer

    • Rapid prototyping

  • Research Operations

    • Participant management

1

Understand the Challenge

Team

  • 3 UX Designer/Researcher

2

Solution Design

Duration

  • February 2025 - Present

Problems with the Original Report

Text-Heavy & Overwhelming

  • Dense paragraphs with little visual hierarchy

  • Users must sift through long text blocks to find relevant details

Complex Medical Jargon

  • Technical terms are not explained in plain language

  • Creates confusion and leaves many readers unsure about what their results mean

Unclear Structure

  • Information is not prioritized or broken down into digestible sections

  • Important insights are buried in long sentences instead of being highlighted

Lack of Engagement

  • The design looks formal and static, similar to an academic or government report

  • No visual elements (icons, color cues, charts) to keep readers interested

Accessibility Concerns

  • Long blocks of copy and jargon-heavy language make it hard for readers with varying literacy levels or accessibility needs

  • Not designed for quick scanning or diverse community use

Tools

  • Figma

  • Miro

  • Zoom

  • MAXQDA

Participants want to understand their health results,
but complicated graphs, lack of guidance, and emotionally sensitive data
left them confused and discouraged.

Overview

Whole Communities- Whole Health (WCWH) is a research initiative at UT Austin that aims to provide accessible healthcare resources to the Austin community and return data back to participants in the form of digital reports.

The Health and Wellness Report focuses on the participants’ physical and mental health. My goal was to ensure the report was clear, accessible, and resourceful.

The Pain

Health reports are often boring, overly complex, and lack actionable guidance, leaving users confused and disengaged from their own health
Traditional health reports are often difficult for people to engage with. They tend to be text-heavy, filled with medical jargon, and disconnected from users’ real needs. As a result, many individuals struggle to understand their results, feel overwhelmed by the complexity, and lack clear next steps or resources to support their health journey

Impact Glance

  • Challenge: Presenting emotionally sensitive mental health data clearly so that users can interpret it confidently

  • Solution: Include an example graph to guide participants in reading their results, and provide the community result range as a reference for interpretation

  • Result: Completed 3 rounds of testing and iterations with 16 participants, leading to an improvement in participant comprehension from 20% to 60%

3

User Testing

4

Reflecting

Understand the Challenge

Solution Design

Clarifying Mental Health Results

  • Problem: Mental health data was difficult to interpret without additional guidance

  • Solution: Introduced a box graph to represent results for clarity and added an “example graph” to show how to interpret the results

  • Why this solution: Visualizing data with clear reference points makes abstract results easier to understand and lowers the barrier for users unfamiliar with graphs. By including the “example graph”, users can use that as their guidance if still needed support