NASA JPL / DROUGHT INDICATORS / ONGOING RESEARCH

DESIGNING WATER APPLICATIONS

How principles of industrial design can improve NASA data products.

Drought indicators are often built by scientists, for scientists — rich in rigor, but hard for water managers to use. This project asks how product-design methods can connect science to real decisions.

02 / PREMISE

CUSTOMERS DON’T BUY SPECS.

We choose products, services, and technology for what they make possible — a chair, a shoe, a phone, a car — each good built through a process that turns a stated need into a considered, tested, manufactured object.

As part of optimizing how these products get made, designers and

strategists translate customer needs into requirements long before a

single unit ships. A running shoe, for instance, isn't "a shoe" — it's a

resolved list of trade-offs:

REFLECTIVITY
BREATHABILITY
WIDTH
ARCH SUPPORT
COLOR OPTIONS
LIGHTER CUSHIONING

03 / TENSION

DESIGN THINKING IS A DISCIPLINE, NOT A MOOD BOARD.

Design translates an ambiguous problem through research, empathy, definition, ideation, prototype, test, and refinement — working alongside engineering and science rather than competing with them.

03 / DATA TOOLS ARE PRODUCTS

A TOOL IS A PRODUCT WHEN SOMEONE DEPENDS ON IT
TO DO SOMETHING.

A product does not have to be physical. A map, dashboard, forecast, or drought indicator is also a designed object — one with users, requirements, interactions, decisions, and consequences.

If someone depends on information to allocate water, plan a crop, prepare for drought, or manage a reservoir, the way that information is delivered is part of the product.

Available drought data products -traditionally designed by scientists for other scientists.

04 / context

WHEN CONDITIONS arE LESS PREDICTABLE, INFORMATION
HAS TO BE MORE USEFUL.

We are asking people to make higher stakes decisions in a more variable system. Drought, heat, flood, changing snowpack, and increasingly variable water availability place greater pressure on the people responsible for land, agriculture, reservoirs, and communities.

Their challenge is not simply having more data. It is knowing what conditions mean, what may happen next, and what action to take.

Available drought data products -traditionally designed by scientists for other scientists.

03 / why

"Most water managers have found that available

drought indicators are not useful for their applications."

ANNE STEINEMANN, DROUGHT INFORMATION FOR IMPROVING PREPAREDNESS IN THE WESTERN STATES, 2014

04 / QUESTION

WHAT IF DROUGHT DATA WERE DESIGNED LIKE A PRODUCT?

Turn that same lens on data. Dozens of drought indicators already exist —

precipitation percentiles, soil moisture anomalies, evapotranspiration

deficits, vegetation indices — each one a real, rigorous measurement of

the water cycle.

Available drought data products -traditionally designed by scientists for other scientists.

06 / DATA JOURNEY

FROM USABLE TO USEFUL

How stakeholders experience a data product determines whether they can use it at all — which in turn determines the size of its real-world impact. Design's opening is to move indicators from merely usable togenuinely useful: built around the action, the decision, the goal, not

just the reading.

06 / DATA JOURNEY

FROM EARTH OBSERVATIONS TO HUMAN DECISIONS

How raw data becomes meaningful information through a transparent pipeline.

05 / PROJECT CONTEXT

NASA JPL. REAL PEOPLE. REAL DECISIONS.

This research was funded through an interdisciplinary climate-adaptation program, contributing to the National Climate Assessment and connecting drought science to the people who use it.

The goal: use the methods of product design to make drought science more operational, connect science to the decisions people make with it, and treat water managers, farmers, and agencies for what they are — the customers of a data product.

06 / solve for one, extend to many

START WITH THE
EXTREME USER.

Designing for a wider range of people makes a better product for everyone. Extreme users' needs are amplified, and their workarounds are more visible — pulling out real needs that the mainstream middle of the bell curve never surfaces on its own. We start with people operating at the edge of water scarcity— where decisions are hardest and information gaps are highest. Their needs reveal the decision moments generic tools often miss.

07 / TRANSLATING THE METHOD

TO WATER SYSTEMS.

We ran the same extreme-user logic on the water system itself: starting with the whole U.S., narrowing to drought-affected states, and following managers through a full agricultural water year.