Design studio: regional explore data pages

[shawnbot]

Tasks:

• Schedule design studio (Wednesday, 3/16 at 9:30 PT/12:30 ET)
• Identify user needs to address in design studio
• Write agenda and come up with a list of prompts
• Do the design studio!
• Collect ideas and document them (here or elsewhere?)

Previously:

What if we removed the state and offshore area views from all of the explore data sections and moved them to their own (forthcoming) regional pages? Then the explore data sections could link to those, and we wouldn't have to duplicate the functionality across pages. The explore data pages would only be responsible for showing US-level maps and would always show all possible commodity options. Regional pages could be made to only offer the options valid for that region.

This would dramatically simplify many of the explore data pages (and solve the Alaska/Pacific problem that we've worked around with some ugly hacks). The regional pages would become a bit heavier in terms of data, but I think that they might actually load more quickly because they'd involve less geo data and the maps could share SVG symbols (e.g. for county outlines).

There's a lot more to discuss here, namely: What does this do for the user?

[shawnbot]

(This started as a comment in #1213.)

[meiqimichelle]

Copied from #1213

@shawnbot I think some sort of fairly big reorg will be needed. I'm not sure if this particular solution is the way to go because I'm not sure yet what to do about the general site data/content structure issues that are coming up in testing. I think if we think through the content paths a little more (as in, how will people find data on the site generally? they're on the homepage, then dot dot dot...), then that will help inform this discussion. Almost everyone, for example, tries to click on the map on the homepage to go see data about their state. So, maybe that's the 'initial' view, and then there's a 'national' view that you can choose that looks more like what we already have?

But yeah -- I don't think it will make sense to have several different places with state information, like you were saying.

Hmmm, so, yeah -- next steps could possibly be 1) me writing up a research summary on the interviews; 2) we as a team coming up with content goals/desired outcomes for the data part of the site; 3) design studio!! Maybe could do the design studio by mid next week?

[meiqimichelle]

I talked with @ericronne about this. We think even without all the nice research result write-ups, he can start thinking about what would happen when you click on a state and you get a view of all the things. Similarly, maybe when you click on 'explore data', the landing page looks similar except for the national view.

[shawnbot]

Just a couple of notes that may help in that process:

• Most data sets exist across multiple years, but the years vary from one data set to the next.
• Many of the state-specific (and all of the offshore area) data exists only at a regional level, in which case there's no need for a map. Only the county-level data sets should require maps on the state pages.
• I'm really interested in how people compare state-specific figures to those of other states. It might be interesting to show the state figures rising and falling relative to the other states, for instance as a line chart in which the current state is bold and in front, and other states are lighter in the background.
• For the economic figures we could show state $ and % figures alongside one another, which I think will be much more useful than the modal thing we've got going now (where you can only see one at a time).
• Are per-capita or otherwise normalized figures interesting at all? cc @mentastc @usEITI

[ericronne]

@meiqimichelle @shawnbot
Just for my own grokking purposes, i made this table right here, which breaks down the content in the Explore section.

These three Explore topics have no regional data, right (all under Revenue)?…

• Federal revenue by company
• Reconciliation
• Corp income tax
• Much of the Disbursements data (bits which are not specific to regions)

So if we wanted to keep our larger info architecture as is, the Explore landing page could include:

• Federal summary map and chart(s)
• Nav to region data pp
• Nav to Reconciliation, Corp tax, and Disbursements

Tomorrow i'll try to noodle on some actual layouts.

[meiqimichelle]

We do have interesting disbursement information for states! It could be one of the most interesting bits, I think @ericronne

[shawnbot]

The other way we could think about it is to keep the existing Explore Data pages and simplify the ones that currently include regional data so that they just link to the regional pages wherever a state or offshore area is shown. So the maps and listings would become "hard" links (ideally, ones that preserve user options and pass along the currently selected commodity, year, etc.) rather than ones that just change what's displayed on the current page.

We could also explore the option of exploding these pages even further, and turning commodity from a modal option into more of a dimension, so that each exploration would show individual maps/listings/icicles/whatever for each commodity, one after the other on the page. The state pages could repeat this pattern by showing, for instance, a county map per commodity (and maybe one for the overall total).

[ericronne]

So if i'm following you…

If i clicked federal revenue by location, i'd see a summary us map (like we have now), but the table would be a commodity breakout, rather than a state list. Then if i clicked on illinois, i'd be taken to The illinois page, which ideally filters to show me the federal revenue.

And i think i semi get what you're saying re dimension. Multiple maps or icicles on a page might get busy, but we could explore

[shawnbot]

I think the Federal Revenue by Location page could stay mostly the same, and even keep the regional list below so you can easily see which regions bring in the most revenue (I like to say that a map is never enough on its own, and for accessibility reasons the list is crucial). The only difference would be that the shapes on the map and names in the list would link to the regional pages, rather than changing what's shown on the current page.

If having multiple maps or charts on a page gets too busy, we could consider hiding some of that detail behind accordions. But I'm really liking the idea of having all of the data laid out on the page rather than hidden behind (sometimes mysterious) form inputs. My biggest issue right now is that the interfaces are really opaque: you have to really hunt for the data by selecting different options, rather than just scrolling down a page and, well, reading.

[ericronne]

@shawnbot @meiqimichelle

A thought starter here...

This is more or less what an area-based (ie state- / region-based) feature could look like on the home page. It's designed with the assumption that we're talking about content in the explore data section. We'd have to talk about what the implications would be if we folded some of the how it works material into this. Should have a sketching session to map out everything? Starting with basic wires showing how things would be reshuffled?

[meiqimichelle]

We are going to have a design studio on this. We will include our colleagues from Deloitte and perhaps some of the FEC team. We are going to try for the week of March 7.

[shawnbot]

Here are some more ideas that have been swirling around in my head for the last week or so. I'm recording them here for safe keeping:

A more static architecture

We may be able to eliminate a lot of dynamic elements from both the nation-wide and regional pages in this process. We could break many of the explore data pages up by commodity or product, rather than dynamically updating the page based on a user selection.

• For instance, the Federal Revenue by Location page (and the corresponding section on each regional page) could have an introduction that lists the sum totals for 2004-2013, and a bar chart showing the relative proportions of each commodity. Below, a section for each commodity group would show (with a map and table, like we have now) which states brought in revenue for each. Both the map and the table would link to the state pages. Commodity-specific sections could even break out the different revenue types in a separate chart.
• Year might be the only dynamic element on these pages when all is said and done. This would dramatically simplify the interface, probably allowing us to ditch the open/close functionality altogether. We've currently only got one other user-selectable option in the federal revenue and production explorations, and that's commodity/product.
• It might make a lot of sense to pre-compute the sum totals and output them in the Jekyll templates rather than doing it exclusively in JavaScript. This takes more of a progressive enhancement approach, which I like a lot. It also makes the site easier to test and eases spot-checking of certain figures (e.g. a certain state's Oil & Gas revenue in a given year).

[shawnbot]

I think that this redesign could go a long way toward unifying the revenue and production data, especially on the regional pages. There's no reason that any of these ideas wouldn't work on a national level, though, too. Here are some sketches that I made the other day:

Federal Revenue (by Location)

This isn't dramatically different from what we have right now, but I was trying to capture the basic building blocks of the federal revenue page. The most important thing is the sentence (or paragraph) that describes the data, and my thinking is that we can generate that on the Jekyll side using static data rather than in JavaScript using data loaded at runtime. We could have sections on the page for the total revenue figures as well as either commodity groups ("Hardrock Minerals") and/or individual commodities (oil, gas, gold, silver, etc.). These would be anchor links (/federal-revenue/#hardrock) on the page rather than dynamic "states" of the app.

The progressive enhancement happens when we bring in the timeline and update the numbers and visuals throughout the page to match the selected year(s) when the user interacts with it. We might consider even renaming this page just "Federal Revenue" and placing more emphasis on the text rather than the location breakdowns. The map + table pattern is one that we can repeat throughout the explorations, including on the state pages when we show revenue or production by county.

Another idea that I think we should consider is to use a cartogram like this one that sizes all of the regions equally.

State Pages

I fleshed out some of these ideas a bit more on this sketch of what state pages might look like:

In this instance we've got sections on the page for different types of data:

• The federal revenue section shows a county map and charts that break down the revenue by one or more of the following:
  1. County
  2. Commodity
  3. Revenue type
• The production section would be broken down by product ("short tons of coal", etc.). We can show county maps and tables here, and we can note what portion of the production came from federal land. Either way, it would be important to show the federal lands on the map.
• Economic impact sections (GDP, jobs, and exports) would just be time series: bar or line charts, each as either value and/or %. In some cases it might be interesting to overlay other states or national figures to show how the regional numbers compare. In text we might say something like, "Extractive industries accounted for 33% of Wyoming's gross domestic product in 2013, compared with 4% nationally."

The little "US" map icons could link to the nationwide explorations for each data set.

Charts and Timelines

Data in each section (both on national and regional pages) should be charted in the same linear fashion (bar or line charts), which would reinforce the implicit connections between the different data. The "shape" of production volume should roughly mirror federal revenue and GDP, for instance—and if it doesn't, maybe there's a story to tell. Timelines for all sections should be aligned on the same overall year range (2003-2014) so you can more easily compare their shapes as you scroll down the page.

Side note: even though exports data is only available for 2011-2014, I think we should chart the data points on the same 2004-2013 time scale, and design the charts in such a way that it's clear there is no data before 2011.

Revenue type could be encoded as stacked bars in revenue charts with patterns. The icons here are poorly drawn glossary links:

[shawnbot]

Summary thoughts and observations forthcoming...

[meiqimichelle]

Here are some of my take-away notes to add to your summary @shawnbot

• People should be able to see at a glance what's available in each state. "Wyoming at a glance" at the top, for example.
• People should be able to understand the key take-aways without knowing what they should be looking for on the page.
• We should probably 'start' with commodities since that's how people think of things. ie, maybe start at location, and then the next 'choice' is commodities.
• Explaining land types, and which land we're talking about (federal, state, etc), is probably pretty important.
• Comparing across states might be important. "Where does Texas rank compared to other states?" Otherwise, there's no context into whether a value on the Texas page is big, small, whatever.
• We need to be able to direct people to the states and counties that have more info. ie, we should highlight those places where we have extra contextual and in-depth info.
• We need to be able to pull in the case studies, where relevant.
• Sections might be: revenue/production; laws; revenue/disbursements; impact (this is how the new opt-in state stuff is being organized at the moment, and might work well for these sections overall). We can also look at how the county info subsections work.

[shawnbot]

Here are some of my takeaways to add to @meiqimichelle's:

• Summaries (both data-driven and human-written) are important, and establish the context in which people will consume regional information. State rankings (e.g. "2nd highest oil producer") were raised as a solution, but I think that a more quantitative measurement ("Wyoming produced 23% of the nation's oil in 2013") would also be helpful.
  • Linking to relevant case studies for a given state is important. We might even want to activate counties with case studies as links on maps and in lists to encourage users to dig in.
• Commodities are a good organizing principle because they allow us to show the relationship between different data sets. Showing production by commodity is necessary because production units are commodity-specific.
  • It might not be necessary to break down economic impacts by commodity if the most important questions concern how the extractives industry as a whole relates to the region.
• Federal and non-federal land distinctions are important, and state (and county) maps should always show federal lands to provide more context for federal figures.
  • Also, federal production figures can be compared side-by-side with "all lands" figures (production on private and state-owned lands and waters), and we can summarize a state's share of production on federal land if that's interesting.
• Generally, it seems that we're moving in the direction of a modeless (vs. modal) structure for this page with all of the content laid out in a predefined order. There may be interactive elements, but we can better match the narrative of the report (and inform future updates to it) by limiting the number of dynamic elements.
  • Time (year) seems like the most obvious dimension along which we could add interactivity, but I'm interested in the idea of making these pages entirely (or at least mostly) static. At the very least, the data should be used to generate the summary text and the appropriate commodity sections for each state.

[meiqimichelle]

@shawnbot is this issue done then?!?!?!