Missouri's flood app does five things, on purpose

Missouri built its new flood and drought app around one design question: could someone's grandparent use this?

The answer shaped everything. The app does five things: real-time flood conditions, short-term and five-day flood forecasts, the drought monitor, and soil moisture. And it does only those five. There are no extra layers to toggle on. The state is clear this was the choice, not a limitation. The goal is an experience that works the same way every time, for everyone, on the day they need it most.

That's a genuinely hard discipline for any team sitting on rich data, public or private. The instinct is always to ship everything the data can do. Missouri's team decided that a resident checking river levels before a storm doesn't need everything. They need the answer, fast, in a form their whole family can read.

Source: Government Technology