An App We Can Trust: Lessons Learned in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Denice Ross has fifteen years of experience in user-centered design and specializes in creating large web sites that convey complex information through an intuitive user experience. When Denice joined the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center in 2001, Census 2000 was being released and there was great promise of using the Internet to democratize federal statistics so they would be easy for non-data-experts to access and use.

She built the GNOCDC.org web site of neighborhood data, with a loyal following of 5,000 unique monthly visits before Katrina, and now double the traffic and a wide audience including neighborhood leaders, national media and the White House as they track the recovery of New Orleans after the storm. Ms. Ross has been a long-time contributor to the field of “public participation GIS” and is nationally recognized as a leader in developing actionable metrics for community data web sites.