The Comparative Toxicogenomic Database Website

Making the CTD research platform clearer, simpler and more intuitive

Context

The Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) is a federally-funded platform used by scientists and researchers to explore the connections between chemicals, genes, and diseases. CTD offers a powerful search function and a suite of analysis tools for interpreting complex toxicogenomic data.

Discovery & Research

Stakeholder Interviews

Initial discussions with stakeholders highlighted structural issues and a cluttered interface. Stakeholders agreed that better visibility of features—especially search and analysis tools—was a top priority.

User Study

We conducted a User Study via Qualtrics, gathering insights from real CTD users.

Most users came for using the **search** feature, especially in the *chemical* category.
Users often typed long chemical names and sifted through thousands of results.
Many were unaware of **analysis tools** available right on the site.
A surprising number left the site to perform analysis on third-party platforms.

The Ah-ha! Moment

While analysing the user survey data, I found that the reason why users weren't using the tools wasn’t just the tool's complexity, it was discoverability. A lot of users didn’t even know these tools existed on the CTD website. In the current website, they were hidden under a small dropdown in the navigation bar.

This completely shifted our design direction. Now instead of simplifying the tools, we needed to make them visible and approachable first.

Initial Designs

On the side, I also started exploring new design variations and experimenting with layouts for the new homepage.

The Problem

Despite its capabilities, CTD’s homepage didn’t effectively guide users. The most-used feature—search—was hard to discover and slow to use. Analysis tools were underutilized, often overlooked or misunderstood. Users were exporting data to third-party tools instead of using CTD’s built-in features.