Software for Hazardous Chemical Reporting

Reporting software to help facilities with hazardous chemicals comply with EPA regulation

Overview

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the EPA jointly build Tier2 Submit, a desktop software program that helps facilities with hazardous chemicals comply with EPA regulation. Tier2 Submit and associated legislation has helped communities avoid major chemical disasters like the 2013 chemical explosion in West, Texas that killed 15 people, or the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India that killed thousands. But the software, designed in the ‘90s, needed an update to help users enter their data more accurately, easily, and quickly.

Research

Although Tier2 Submit is a fairly niche tool, it is used by over 20,000 facility owners and emergency managers across the country each year. As the Project Manager and UX designer in this redesign project, I wanted to learn what existing features our users needed and appreciated and what new features would make their chemical reporting process easier. I traveled to conferences across the country to speak with emergency planners and facility owners from as far away as Vermont, Hawaii, and Guam. I logged insights from these conversations in an extensive spreadsheet, which I could share in real time with the developers and use to reveal patterns within user feedback.

Planning

Our research provided a hefty list of user-requested features. Based on our timeline and team capacity, we determined that we could resolve user pain points with these new features:

• A graphical interface for users to visualize the location of their facility

• Better data checks to help ensure that users didn’t enter erroneous data

• Ability to export files to .csv sheets, which would allow our users to edit their data in Excel as well as in our program

• Customized fields for each state, so that they get exactly the information their firefighters need to stay safe

• A tutorial offered at the beginning of the program to acclimate new users to the new tool

Design

The original Tier2 Submit was built in FileMaker, which limited our navigation and interaction options. This time, we had total design freedom to redo the navigation, user flows, visuals, and more.

From a visual design standpoint, our users repeatedly emphasized that they didn’t care how it looked—it just needed to work. Therefore, we focused energy that might otherwise be placed in refining the look and feel into ensuring that our user flows were as intuitive as they could be.

Results and Learning

One of the main lessons for me was the importance of having distinct roles. Throughout the project, I struggled to balance the responsibilities of a project manager as well as those of the UX researcher and designer. However, not all organizations have the luxury of assigning one role per team member, and I picked up some balancing skills through this project.

That said, the project was overall a big success. Read about the released project in the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration blog, watch an 8-minute segment of a presentation I gave on applying Human Centered Design to the project (jump to 1:35 in the video on the left, or above on mobile), or see what a few of our users say about our redesign:

“I am ecstatic over some of the new changes in the Tier2submit software. The live validation checks are INCREDIBLE! I think this is going to drastically improve filers’ accuracy, and ease of figuring out required fields.”

“I just tested this version and I am quite impressed.”

“This system works great. This system flows very well and has good information tabs at appropriate locations on the screen. The ability to see either map view or street view is a great enhancement. Great job on this new version and job well done.”