Pew Charitable Trusts

  • Research
  • Strategy
  • UX
  • Wireframes
  • Data Visualization

A data visualization microsite that communicates the state of public pensions at a national and state level

Pew Charitable Trusts challenges us with creating a microsite that could clarify the complex and evolving picture of public pensions to policymakers and their staff. The tool is used to help inform policy decisions by highlighting the performance of each state and their change over time.

Learning the Lingo

The first step in the process was familiarizing ourselves with public pensions—reaching an understanding of concepts from Net Amortization to Investment Allocation—so that we could understand the data enough to communicate it effectively.

Collaborative Definition

We worked closely with the team of pensions experts at Pew to figure out the best way to structure the collections of information to tell a clear story to policymakers. From there, we determined the best combinations of charts and graphs to convey the data with clarity and accuracy.

Notes from definition workshop

High-fidelity for Details in the Data

I produced high-fidelity wireframes so that we could make detailed decisions about how to display the data without worrying about style.

Wireframe for charts
Wireframe for gross/net

Designed for Clarity

Then I applied the aesthetic of Pew Charitable Trusts’ main website to the microsite.

Animation of state profile page scrolling
Page designs for homepage and indicator page
Design for state profile page
Page design for state comparison page
Animation of bubble chart about pensions in the 50 states
Screenshot of positive client feedback

You can view the full version of the public pensions data visualizations here.

 

About the Project

This project was created during my time at Threespot.

Client

Pew Charitable Trusts

Project Team

Research, Strategy, User Experience, UI Design—Meryl Pritchett
Creative Direction—Sid Barcelona
Development—Ted Whitehead
Project Management—Lizzy Cederberg