Response: At Chipotle, How Many Calories Do People Really Eat? An Assignment for News, Narrative and Design III at The New School

All about the data

The New York Times’ recent article on fast food standby Chipotle has garnered a lot of buzz lately for an online article that incorporates data. Perhaps what’s most appealing about the data in this article is the fact that it’s data that we can all relate to. The article leads with a basic and easy-to-read bar chart.

However, from a user perspective, there’s quite a bit of scrolling. The arrow button on the side of the page is really confusing. It makes it look like it’s part of the story and another way to get more information on the same story, when in fact, pushing the arrow directs to another story.

Perhaps if this story was designed as a slideshow, it would have been more user friendly — only because there would be less scrolling involved, and scrolling could easily deter someone from finishing reading the entire story. There also could be less text, or all of the data could be moved together so it can be viewed all at once, instead of endlessly scrolling. An easy way to do this without interrupting the current design of the article would be to add a link at the end of the article: “Click here to view our ‘How Many Calories Do People Really Eat at Chipotle’ photo essay,” since the photos illustrating each meal would be more powerful if shown together. The reader can’t really grasp an accurate depiction with so much text in between each row of photos. The link could lead to a pop-up of all the photos together on one page, with calories and other information listed.

This article makes me question the details of data. For example, a chicken bowl is listed as having 850 calories — but even Chipotle restaurants give more detail of how those calories are broken up on their menu. Not everyone covers their faux Mexican food in heaps of guacamole and sour cream at Chipotle as the NYT photo shows.