The Data Briefing: Introducing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s New Open Data Portal
My first column when I came back from last year’s summer sabbatical was on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) PatentsView project.
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News and Events on BLS
11 posts
Worth a Thousand Words? Announcing Ready-to-Go Interactive Graphics with BLS News Releases
Last spring I wrote about how we’ve been using more and better charts and maps to help you understand our statistics. Today I’m excited to tell you about a new set of graphical tools to make our news releases more illuminating at the moment of their posting.
The Content Corner: Creating Engaging Content with Data
Over the last several years, continuing advances in computer processing power and storage have brought about the growth of what some call big data. Mobile and wearable devices now also generate large amounts of data via our
Visualizing BLS Data to Improve Understanding
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s the value of a striking, cool chart or map of some BLS data? At the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), we’re always thinking of better ways to help our users understand the information we produce. The global economy is complex, and the statistics to explain
Persona Development Case Study: NCI and Spanish Language Outreach
Government websites need to address the needs of diverse audiences. Although translations are a first step towards engaging non-English speaking audiences, the intended audience may be alienated if information is not presented in a culturally relevant way. The
The API Briefing: Bureau of Labor Statistics Invites Developers to Build Employment Apps
The federal government collects an amazing amount of economic data. Several agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury, and the Census Bureau collect economic data, ranging from the stock market activity to local business conditions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects information on the labor market and is a rich source
Making Prototypes with Tools You Already Have
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. For me, the necessity resulted from long product development cycles paired with short windows for user testing and little room for iteration. The “invention” was the discovery of a powerful set of tools for prototyping that are available on just about
Trends on Tuesday: America’s New First Screen
It has finally happened: Mobile has bumped TV as America’s first screen. Recent analysis from Flurry Analytics, which included data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that time spent on mobile devices grew in the U.S. by 9.3% to 2 hrs and 57 minutes, while time spent watching TV has remained flat at 2 hrs and 48
Results: 2014 Federal User Experience Survey
The cream of the crop of the top of the mountain of ALL of the surveys I run has to be the Federal User Experience (UX) Survey. It’s the second time I’ve had the privilege of running it with Jean Fox, research psychologist extraordinaire from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When I start thinking about learning
Finding Participants for User Experience Studies
How do you find participants for your usability studies? I spoke recently with the User Experience Community of Practice about how we recruit participants for usability and cognitive studies at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Hopefully I can give you some new ideas about recruiting volunteers to fuel your user research. At BLS, we
Talking Usability with Kids over Milk and Cookies
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently created a new Web page made especially for students, so who better to give it a test run than children attending “Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day”? We took advantage of this event held on April 24, 2014, at
