Case Study – USDA (APHIS)

The client

Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is the agency within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) responsible for protecting animal health, animal welfare, and plant health.

The challenge

After Hurricane Katrina, the USDA extended the Animal Welfare act to require farmers, breeders and other organizations that keep animals to develop emergency response plans. The USDA needed to create awareness training to help the community and the inspectors supporting them understand and comply with the new regulation.

But, APHIS needed more than the standard (boring) compliance training that just “decode” the rules. They wanted training in plain language, that gained community trust and persuaded them to voluntarily comply.

The solution

Usability.org applied iterative user-centered research and design methods develop and evaluate the training materials. First we conducted interviews with policy makers, animal experts and animal inspectors to unpack new requirements and identify potential barriers to compliance–including attitudinal barriers. We used the findings to inform prototype training materials, which we presented to inspectors (focus groups) and regulated community members (individual interviews) for additional feedback. After we iterated again, adding a “Response Planning Workbook” to make planning easy, we conducted a final focus group/train-the-trainer session with Midwestern dog breeders to tweak and finalize the Response Planning tools.

The three phases/types of user research uncovered critical insights into what the community understood–and misunderstood–about both the regulation, and about how to persuasively communicate the benefits of creating an Emergency Response Plan. The materials

The result

By applying user-centered methods to awareness and compliance training materials design, we helped USDA create training materials that not only effectively explain the regulation, but that persuade them to comply by providing easy-to-use tools and good reasons to do it.

The training package was produced and distributed for use by and within the animal community.