Data Narrative: Outcomes for Utah’s Working Students
Utah Data Research Center
The Utah Data Research Center, as part of the Utah Department of Workforce Services, aims to create interactive and meaningful experiences with its data narratives. During the pre-production phase of a data narrative, the Utah Data Research Center uses innovative technologies such as Adobe XD to convey a clear understanding of how the final narrative product will look and act once it is coded into D3 Javascript. This has allowed for a smooth review process on the initial design and flow among the project team. A 2019 data narrative for one of the center’s original research projects, “Outcomes for Utah’s Working Students” followed this design process.
Short demo of the interactive design in the Adobe XD prototype preview mode.
First, the data narrative was created as a static design prototype in Adobe XD using a minimal and clean approach for the visuals. In early project meetings, it was verbally explained how the content and graphs would transition while a user scrolled. It was later expanded to use the full prototype functionalities from Adobe XD by wiring up interactions between artboards. This enabled it to imitate transitions during scrolling and show how the graphs change the display of information when the data filters are clicked on. This met the center’s objective to fully communicate the design’s intent of controlling the story in a data narrative while still allowing a user to explore the data. See the static design prototype below. For more information on the Utah Data Research Center, visit udrc.utah.gov.
