Using Card Sorting to Improve Public Health Information: Enhancing Worker Health Charts

It is crucial for public health professionals to have easy and timely access to occupational safety and health (OSH) data to monitor adverse outcomes and identify risk factors that may harm our nation's workforce. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health created Worker Health Charts (WHC), a data query and visualization tool, to provide quick and easy access to multiple occupational data sources. However, user feedback indicated that the 2016 WHC navigational menu was difficult to use and did not fully meet user needs. Because access to occupational data is critical in many contexts, we sought to design a menu that would be suitable for various types of users.

The 2016 WHC navigational menu lists 7 high-level OSH topics and 18 OSH subtopics. To gain insight into how users organize and categorize OSH information, we conducted a series of user experience tests using a method known as card sorting. During the process, participants were given a web link that contained occupational health topics, and they were tasked with grouping or combining similar topics.

The card-sorting techniques identified opportunities to reorganize (eg, create, delete, merge, split) or rename topics for clarity. The final proposed WHC menu was restructured into 4 high-level OSH topics and 14 OSH subtopics.

This study details how card sorting can be used to guide and improve the navigation and content structure of OSH information and the acceptability of the user interface to facilitate access to public health data. Future steps for WHC include validating the proposed menu through task-based testing.