Telling human stories with data

Many Americans believe the Death Penalty is applied fairly. But data from the Death Penalty Information Center undeniably proves otherwise.

my role

Research, design and prototyping

for

the Death Penalty Information Center

from

Jan - Aug 2024

Impact

DPIC shifts from being just a research tool, to an influential leader in criminal justice, all while staying neutral.

Outcome

Using storytelling to encourage newbies to learn more about the death penalty helps avoid misconceptions.

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) provides facts and data on death penalty related issues in the United States.

DPIC does not take a position on the death penalty itself but is critical of problems in its application.

DPIC lies at the heart of the death penalty in the US backing up lawyers, prosecutors, researchers, media and the public with accurate facts and data.

DPIC initially reached out to my team for help managing their massive repository of death penalty information, but that quickly changed.

DPIC reports on new death penalty issues every day. Inevitably, their data backend is becoming too large to handle.

Meeting with DPIC's tight-knit staff at our kickoff meeting in DC. Together, we explored their impact on the criminal justice space and on leaders like policymakers and activists.

But when I learned of DPIC's extensive loyal user base, credibility, and the power to create criminal justice reform in the US,
I got the sense that the problem is bigger than managing data.
What was it? I didn't know yet.

To find out, my team needed to turn to people working in the death penalty space or those impacted by it.

The goal: learn anything we can from anyone

Our two-pronged approach to exploratory research included 1) learning about death penalty problems, and 2) how other domains solve similar ones.

So what did we learn?

Reducing a life to a data point on a spreadsheet masks its humanity.

DPIC maintains a database of anyone that was executed or on death row since 1973. Each one of these rows represents lives lived and lives taken.

Data is undeniable, but data alone isn't enough to mobilize people to action.

Some of it is recognizing that people are just like us. ... when there’s a realization that they are a brother, sister, or father, people recognize the injustice.
Activist in the death penalty space

It needs to tell a story.

Users fall on a spectrum of investment vs. knowledge of the death penalty.

After 20 ish interviews, I started to notice this pattern in the types of people learning about the death penalty.

So really, the problem is that

DPIC has a lot of valuable information,

but casual information seekers and concerned curious learners

have trouble connecting the dots and putting it all together.

My team's hypothesis

What if we used storytelling to help people understand the death penalty better and increase interest?

Using storytelling, DPIC can make casual information seekers want to learn more.

Backing the story up with data and visualizations can help concerned curious learners start to see connections...

...eventually becoming dedicated thought influencers, who can spread more accurate information to other members of the public.

I got to this hypothesis by mapping insights about the problem space to user archetypes.

There was no perfect way to do this, so we used a combination of methods:

Affinity mapping findings to see patterns

Voting on opportunities to prioritize the most pressing and interesting ones

Connecting high priority opportunities with who they would impact the most

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How we can help you

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How we can help you

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How we can help you

My team is in the process of testing this hypothesis with some initial concepts

This project is a work in progress 👩🏻💻

Follow my team's capstone journey on Medium!

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