Telling a Richer Story: Graphicacy Helps EIG Convey America’s Economic Well-Being
Bringing a print report to life through data visualization
OVERVIEW
Few tools tell the story of America’s economic well-being better than the Distressed Communities Index (DCI).
Developed in 2015 by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), the DCI illustrates stark disparities in economic experience at national and neighborhood levels. Organizations, advocates, and policymakers use this information to prioritize limited resources and drive much-needed change.
For the fourth edition, EIG set out to raise the bar by reimagining the Index as a more visually engaging, intuitive, and context-rich resource. EIG chose Graphicacy not merely to master the complex technical execution, but to collaborate as thought leaders on a vital tool that would humanize economic data like never before.
The Challenge: Delivering a Nation’s Worth of Data
Previous DCI iterations presented largely one-dimensional snapshots and numbers without much meaning behind them. Users spent time digging for information about their communities.
EIG wanted to dramatically revamp the experience in both form and function. Their ideal Index would allow users to quickly find and compare economic data across four geographic levels: state, county, zip code, and congressional district. Greater demographic depth would enhance analyses with statistics on race/ethnicity, nativity, education level, and occupation.
“As an advocacy group, well-presented data is our currency,” said Kenan Fikri, EIG’s director of research and policy development. “Congressional representatives don’t usually see granular data comparing their district to others in the state, region, and country. We knew the DCI could be the ideal conversation starter on where and why we need to build a more inclusive economy.”
The biggest challenge, Fikri acknowledged, involved packaging countless stories from EIG’s vast universe of data. This universe included layered data for 50 states, more than 25,000 zip codes, more than 3,000 counties, and 435 congressional districts. “We needed better storytelling to breathe life into the numbers, along with ideas for making the Index more coherent and appealing,” said Fikri.
Improving the DCI’s aesthetic properties required reconsidering everything from color palettes and page layouts to zoom levels and interactive elements. “EIG came to us wanting to hit a high bar,” said Jeff Osborn, Graphicacy’s creative director. “They invited us to complement and expand on their own ideas to create a resource with extraordinary impact.”
The Solution: Breaking It Down
Graphicacy designers and engineers approached the Index as users would, tracing a typical journey within the map. Understanding where users go, what they look for, and what they can or cannot find proved imperative to developing a more intuitive experience. “If you make the first step as simple as possible, you open the door for people to stay engaged and keep exploring,” said Osborn.
With the help of Mapbox’s robust developer tools, Graphicacy then parsed EIG’s monolithic dataset into more than 150 individual files. Engineers also gathered shapefiles to create map tiles for all four geography views that would render as requested and retain their shape at every zoom level. Breaking down files into smaller pieces ensured speedier load times, since only the data required for a user’s requested view would download at any time.
To solve the riddle of showing four geographic maps at once, Graphicacy created two map toggles: One to highlight congressional district boundaries and one that switches the view from zip code-level to county-level data.
Throughout the project, Graphicacy joined EIG in a series of ideation sessions to explore ideas for contextualizing the data and telling a more human story. These sessions culminated in a data explorer tool featuring charts, slide bars, and other interactive elements to enable easy comparisons among neighborhoods.
“When they first asked us to humanize the data, we wondered if we should literally use pictures of people,” said Osborn. “But we saw the real humanization occurs in the demographic details and the relationships viewable across neighborhoods and experiences.”
“From the start, Graphicacy understood what we were going for,” said Fikri. “Their ideas and execution helped us strike the right balance for an Index rich in information without reaching overload.”
The Result: A Tool to Accelerate Change
In October 2020, EIG reintroduced its Index, which leverages the latest in data visualization technology to tell a detailed economic story of America and every neighborhood within it. “The mapping interface is as clean as possible without sacrificing performance or information,” said Fikri. “It’s a great feat of engineering proficiency and design.”
By raising awareness of economic disparities among the media, policymakers, businesses, and other stakeholders, EIG is confident the Index will serve as a catalyst for action. “We discovered that corporations are one of the core users of the Index,” said Fikri. “They use it to hone supplier development and minority business procurement initiatives in ways that make a difference in distressed communities. And on Capitol Hill, a resource like this is what gets us in the door and invited back again.”
Graphicacy partners with clients to tell engaging stories with data. Graphicacy’s team combines storytelling, thoughtful human-centered design and deep technical capabilities to build and deploy strategic, data-rich digital projects. Graphicacy’s team has created data visualizations and infographics for top-tier organizations and companies, domestically and internationally, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the World Bank, the Center for American Progress, the Anti-Defamation League and many others.
