Aloha Archives: Your Window into Hawaii’s Data and Insights

04 Nov 2024

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Project: Aloha Archives

Authors: JR (Jonathan) Lee, Jared Seto, Shaelyn Loo, and Kevin Clarkin

Overview

The Problem

The existing Hawaii Open Data portal is challenging for the average citizen to navigate. Citizens often encounter difficulties due to:

• Inconsistent dataset tagging
• Lack of data visualizations
• Limited accessibility for those without technical skills

The Solution

Aloha Archives will provide an intuitive and visually appealing portal that personalizes data access for citizens based on their needs. This portal will feature:

• Citizen Personas: Customized experiences for different user profiles (e.g., students, researchers, residents) with relevant data and visualizations.
• Enhanced Navigation: Simplified and clear layout with accessible search filters for datasets by category, organization, or tags.
• Data Visualization Links: Links to existing visualizations.

Approach

This application will serve as a unified platform for organizing, uploading, and exploring datasets relevant to various user personas in Hawai’i, such as education, community, and professional users.

Roles

There are three main roles:

• Users: Can log in, set up profiles, and personalize their experience based on an optional quiz to help determine a user “persona.”
• Admins: Have additional capabilities to manage and edit datasets, oversee organization information, and handle system-wide operations.
• Guests: May browse datasets without options to save their favorites.

Features

The app will offer a clean and interactive interface, including:

• Comprehensive search page: With filtering options.
• Individual dataset pages: Showcasing details like topic, view count, and organization information.
• User profile: Reflecting preferences or personas for tailored dataset recommendations.
• Admin home page: With tools for uploading, editing, and managing datasets.
• Legal information: Such as terms of use, privacy policy, and contact details accessible in the footer for transparency and compliance.

Mockup Pages

Some mockup pages include:

• Landing Page
  • Header with Login
  • Search bar
  • Trending section
  • Footer
• User Home Page
  • Profile Page
  • Optional quiz for personalized experience
    • Helps determine “persona” (e.g., Education, Community, Professional)
  • Saved datasets with options to add or remove
• Admin Home Page
  • Separate header
  • Options to upload and edit datasets
  • Profile Page with Organization Icon, Description, etc.
• Upload Page (for datasets)
• Edit Dataset Page
• Search Page
  • Search bar
  • Search results
  • Filter component on the left
• Dataset Page
  • Title, Topic, View count
  • Dataset preview in table format
  • Organization Logo and data description
• Footer
  • Legal links (terms of use, privacy policy, about us, contact us, etc.)

Use Case Ideas

Completed End-to-End Scenarios

• Regular User:
  • First visit: Go to the landing page, register, take quiz, get personalized data recommendation, visit dataset page, add favorites, go to favorites, compare data in favorites list, and enjoy personalized data insights.
  • Return visit: Same steps as the first time, but without registering.
• Admin: Go to the landing page, log in, visit upload page, upload dataset, go to edit dataset page, edit or remove datasets, and experience a sense of accomplishment.

Beyond the Basics

After implementing the basic functionality, here are ideas for more advanced features:

• Interactive visualizations for datasets that lack visualizations.
• User-customizable visualizations for further data exploration.
• “Schizo mode” to appeal to non-mainstream audiences.