When The Most Important User Was Almost Missed
World Health Organization • Global Road Safety Data App
After two and a half days of intensive workshops with WHO's road safety team, we'd designed the perfect mobile app to support the latest release of the WHO Global Status Reports on Road Safety (GSRRS).
The app would combine and include powerful analytical tools conducting a range of complex queries that would be run against the enormous dataset collected in the published report. The app would display composite graphs generated on the fly, whose combinations runs into the many billions, immediately bringing the data to life for the analysts in the room who loved what we were proposing to do.
We had conducted a thorough investigation of the requirements, desires, workflows, outputs, definition of success and personas. The resulting wireframes, designs and feature list was well received, but something triggered one final check with the team:
"Are there any personas we've missed?"
"Oh yes, we've missed one."
"Who?"
"The Ministers of Transport."
Pause
"Tell us more about Ministers of Transport. Why are they important?"
"Well, they're the only people that can actually affect change. If you need rear seat belt laws introduced, it is the Minister of Transport that drives the initiative."
Silence
"And how long do we reckon will they spend looking at the app?"
"Probably no more than ninety seconds."
We'd just spent 2.5 days building an app for analysts top thoroughly interrogate the data and run all manner of comparison queries. Now we learnt that the most important users, the only people who could actually save lives by changing laws, weren't the analysts but the Ministers for Transport, and they would probably only engage with it for 90 seconds.
Cue a new round of coffee and donuts. We knew we had to replan the wireframes and structure to ensure instant engagement to convey the most important messages in under 90 seconds, whilst keeping all the other tooling present that we'd already designed and had been signed off.
How We Design: Start with Success
Most of our projects are workshop-based. For large projects, we sit down with teams for days, sometimes we've camped out in offices for weeks doing thorough specifications for large scale transformation work where required. In each case however, we always start by defining SUCCESS.
Success Criteria for Road Safety App:
Following the above, we then map personas, the actual people who'll use the app and what they need from it.
The User Who Matters Most
"Are there any personas we've missed?"
"Oh yes. The Ministers of Transport."
Why They Matter:
In every country, there's one person (or small group) who can actually change road safety outcomes: the Minister of Transport. They introduce seat belt laws. They fund road improvements. They set speed limits. They mandate vehicle safety standards.
Analysts can study the data. Field workers can collect it. WHO can publish reports. But only Ministers of Transport can change policy.
Their Usage Pattern:
They'll spend 90 seconds with the app. Not 90 minutes analysing trends. Not even 9 minutes reviewing their country's data. Ninety seconds.
They're busy. They're political. They're comparing themselves to neighbors and peers. They want the headline and they want it fast.
The Problem:
We'd built an app perfect for analysts spending hours with data. We'd missed the users who could actually save lives with policy changes.
Six Big Buttons for Fat Fingers
We needed to keep everything we'd built for analysts, all that analytical power was still necessary. But we had to add a completely different experience for Ministers.
The Solution: Six Big Buttons
Button 1: Big Headlines
The numbers WHO wants you to know, impossible to miss:
- Deaths from road traffic accidents
- Injuries from road accidents
- Key statistics for your country
Large. Bold. Clear. No scrolling. No searching.
Button 2: Find Your Country
One tap shows your country's data. Another tap lets you compare:
- Against your neighbors
- Against countries with similar demographics
- Against global averages
If we're lucky, the Minister stays engaged long enough to see their country ranks poorly compared to peers. That's political pressure. That's motivation for change.
Buttons 3-6: Deep Analytics
All the complex analytical tools we'd designed remain here. Different indicators. Time series. Custom queries. Composite graphs. Everything the analysts need.
But Ministers never need to see this complexity. It's there when needed. It's invisible when it's not.
The Design Philosophy:
"An app for people with fat fingers," we called it. Big touch surfaces. Very easy to use. Very easy to use quickly.
The exact same app serves both the analyst spending hours and the Minister spending 90 seconds. Different entry points. Different workflows. Same data.
So Successful We've Built Dozens More
The Global Road Safety App was launched by leaders with WHO with great pride. More importantly, Ministers of Transport around the world started using it.
However, they weren't the only ones. Other WHO teams saw how simple the app had made conveying vast volumes of report data available to both minister and analysts alike that we started to receive many requests for new iterations.
"I want one too."
The format was so understandable, so easy to use, that it has become a template for many other apps. Some of those inside WHO include:
Wherever organisations have annual or biannual reports, multiple countries to compare, and decision-makers who need quick insights, this format works brilliantly.
Features We've Added:
As we built derivative apps, we improved the pattern:
Billions of Permutations Never Seen Before
Here's what makes this technically fascinating: the app does analysis on the fly.
The Math:
- 194 countries
- Dozens of different indicators
- Multiple year groups
- Custom comparison groups
- Combine any indicator with any country set with any time-period
The Result: Multiple Billions of Permutations Calculated in Milli-Seconds
Every time someone opens the app and creates a comparison, they're likely seeing an analysis that's never been generated before. Not pre-computed. Not cached. Generated in milliseconds based on what that specific user needs right now.
The app answers questions in a fraction of a second that would take an analyst days to compute manually.
Policy Influence in 90 Seconds
Imagine you're the Minister of Transport for a mid-sized country. You're at a conference. Someone mentions WHO's road safety app.
You download it, open it.
90 seconds later:
You've seen that your country has 35 road deaths per 100,000 people. Your neighbour has 18. Countries with similar GDP have an average of 22.
You've just learned, in the time it takes to wait for an elevator, that your country's road safety performance lags significantly behind peers.
That's political pressure. That's data you can't ignore. That's motivation to introduce rear seat belt laws, fund road improvements, mandate vehicle safety checks.
That's the 90-second window that saves lives.
The analysts can dive deeper later. The field workers can collect more granular data. But that initial 90 seconds, showing a Minister they're behind their peers, that's where policy change begins.
Always Ask One More Time
We'd done everything right:
- Comprehensive workshops
- Detailed personas
- Success criteria defined upfront
- User needs mapped thoroughly
- Technical requirements validated
But we'd missed the most important user because we didn't ask one more time: "Are there any personas we've missed?"
Design Thinking Matters:
This isn't a technology story. The technical challenge of generating billions of permutations on the fly is impressive, but it's not the point.
The point is that understanding users, really, deeply understanding them, determines whether technology creates real impact.
An app designed perfectly for analysts would have been used by analysts. And road safety data would remain in analyst reports.
An app designed for both analysts AND Ministers gets used by people who can actually change laws, fund infrastructure, and save lives.
That's the difference.
Building for Billions of Permutations
The Challenge:
Road safety data includes:
- 194 countries
- Dozens of indicators (seat belt laws, helmet laws, speed limits, enforcement levels, death rates, injury rates, etc.)
- Historical data spanning years
- Custom groupings (neighbours, similar GDP, regional)
Users can combine any indicator with any country set with any time period. That's billions of possible combinations.
The Approach:
Pre-computing every possible view would be impossible. Instead, we:
- Optimised data structures for fast querying
- Built efficient comparison algorithms
- Created responsive visualisations that render in milliseconds
- Designed for mobile performance even with complex calculations
The Result:
Tap "Compare my country to neighbours on seat belt law compliance over the last 5 years" and see results instantly. No loading screen. No "please wait." Just immediate answers.
""Nothing is impossible when working with Adappt. If as a project manager you have a clear objective and vision, Adappt will have the best technological solution, the right aesthetic effect, and the desired usability that you need for the project to be a success. Thank you Adappt team for being so client oriented, and such an efficient and effective partner."
Need UX That Serves Multiple Audiences?
The Global Road Safety App proves what's possible when design thinking reveals hidden users: the same platform can serve both power users spending hours analysing data and decision-makers spending 90 seconds finding insights. Whether you're building tools for experts, executives, or both, understanding who actually matters and how they'll really use your system makes the difference between technical success and real-world impact.