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The NICHD Office of Data Science and Sharing developed a User Story Tracker to systematically capture the NICHD research community’s data science and data sharing needs, understand current practices and barriers, and develop efforts to address needs. This structured, reusable framework enables NICHD ODSS—and other organizations—to understand and analyze user needs, distinguish real from perceived challenges, prioritize development resources, and deliver impactful human-centered solutions.
The ultimate goal of the User Story Tracker is to enable an organization to develop, prioritize, and deliver resources that directly support the needs of a given community. The User Story Tracker design is grounded in human-centered design methodologies. NICHD ODSS uses the User Story Tracker to gather information about the NICHD research community’s data science and data sharing needs, in the form of User Stories. This improves visibility into the day-to-day practices of researchers, staff, research participants, and other community members, which then enables the development of solutions that align to the long-term vision of the NICHD data ecosystem, as well as broader NIH, HHS, and federal-wide data strategies. The simple User Story format (Figure 1) is the core unit of the User Story Tracker and comprised of three fields that encourage users to articulate what they are trying to do, why they can’t do it today (i.e., pain points or barriers), and their overall goal. Additional User Story Tracker fields may be used to further contextualize and analyze each User Story. This approach has been successful in revealing the nature of the user need (e.g., if there is a policy matter, a data issue, or a technical problem), distinguishing real barriers from perceived barriers, and identifying details that should be considered in the approach or design of a potential solution. The User Story Tracker ensures that solutions are not just quick fixes, but lasting and impactful.
| User Story | Current Problem | User Goal |
|---|---|---|
| What does the user want to be able to do? | Why can't the user do this today? | What is the user's ultimate goal? |
| “As a (user), I want to (action), so that (action)." | “Today, when I try to (do this) (what happens?)" or "This is not possible today because (why)" | “My goal is to…” |
Figure 1. The simplified three-part User Story format within the User Story Tracker.
Importantly, NICHD provides a reusable User Story Tracker template for other organizations seeking to better understand their own data science and data sharing challenges. The User Story Tracker template includes expanded optional fields that may be useful for organizations to gather additional contextual information about a given User Story and then coordinate with users, work with relevant systems, and to design potential solutions. By adopting and adapting the User Story Tracker, other organizations can establish their own structured processes to document needs and ensure that resources are aligned with the organizational priorities. NICHD User Stories are a foundational component of this GitHub library and the NICHD Ecosystem strategy. Public User Stories are listed on the User Stories page and each published Effort maps to the source User Stories. By connecting User Stories to published Efforts, NICHD encourages adoption of solutions for researchers and other community members facing similar challenges.
Primary contact: NICHDecosystem@nih.gov
- Built by: NICHD and MIT Lincoln Laboratory
- Hosted by: NICHD
- Sponsor contact:
- Rebecca Rosen, Director, NICHD ODSS
- Valerie Cotton, Deputy Director, NICHD ODSS
- Elizabeth Clerkin, Data Science and Sharing Specialist, NICHD ODSS
The NICHD User Story Tracker Template is a structured tool designed to help organizations systematically capture their communities’ needs in data science and data sharing. This template provides a clear, repeatable framework for collecting User Stories and gathering contextual information to develop solutions that address user needs.
Link to NICHD Story Tracker Template
There are four tabs including Instruction Details with instructions for completing and hosting the StoryTracker, StoryTracker (which is where User Stories are recorded), a Data Dictionary describing all fields, and a Categories tab which is referenced by the fields that use controlled vocabularies).
In addition to the three core User Story fields (Figure 1), the Story Tracker tab includes expanded fields where the user story writer (blue), editor (grey), or either the writer or editor (green) can provide additional contextual information such as contact information for the User Story source, whether the User Story has been addressed in an existing effort, systems impacted and new system features that might address the user need, and how each User Story relates to NICHD data science and sharing goals. These additional details can be valuable when planning the design of an effort aimed at addressing a given set of User Stories and for working with relevant systems to adopt solutions that emerge from the effort. The User Story writer can write the user story from the perspective of different users. Users are described both in the core User Story element (which can be described with varying levels of detail such as “As a program officer” or “As researcher/clinician in maternal health”) and in the “User” column where the writer can select from a controlled vocabulary. Each User Story is assigned a Story ID to facilitate tracking. NICHD does not publicly share User Stories that relate only to internal processes or contain sensitive content not suitable for public posting.
NICHD encourages other organizations to adopt and adapt this template to fit their own context. By adopting the User Story Tracker Template as the foundation of a human-centered design process, teams can focus limited resources on the most pressing challenges, promote best practices, and develop solutions that deliver lasting impact.
| S# | User Story | Current Problem | User Goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 69 | As the NICHD Office of Data Science and Sharing, we want to understand NICHD staff and researchers' data science and data sharing needs so we can prioritize and scope the development of resources to address those needs | Today there is no mechanism for systematically documenting and understanding NICHD staff and researcher data science and sharing needs | Our goal is to develop resources that help researchers share and use scientific data |
| 70 | As the NICHD Office of Data Science and Sharing, we want to prioritize the development of ecosystem solutions so we can address urgent researcher and staff pain points | Today there is no mechanism for guiding how to prioritize our work | Our goal is to focus our limited time and resources on the most important issues |
| 71 | As the NICHD Office of Data Science and Sharing, we want to distinguish real from perceived barriers to researchers' data science and sharing goals so we can develop resources that solve real challenges | Today when we receive researcher feedback, the ultimate goals and barriers to achieving those goals are not clear, as researchers tend to focus on quick fixes for their immediate challenges rather than comprehensive solutions | Our goal is to understand whether barriers are real or perceived, to inform how to help researchers achieve their goals in the NICHD data ecosystem |
| 72 | As the NICHD Office of Data Science and Sharing, we want to understand current researcher data sharing and data science practices so we can develop strategies and resources to improve practices as needed | Today we lack visibility into the day-to-day data practices of NICHD researchers | Our goal is to promote data sharing and data science best practices that align with the vision of the NICHD Data Ecosystem and NIH, HHS and other federal policies and frameworks |