Giving context, clarity to COVID-19 numbers in Massachusetts

Giving context, clarity to COVID-19 numbers in Massachusetts

When a newsroom full of producers has trouble finding updated data on a state website, it’s clear to me that the public must have the same difficulty.

Unfortunately, with as many as 7-10 articles being published each day on our website about the COVID-19 outbreak, it was also difficult for audiences to find the latest data on our website.

Headlines about individual developments are great, but each of the stories offers a micro view of one piece of the local situation. With this project, I wanted to offer a macro view of the outbreak in this state.

For this project, I asked myself: What questions do Massachusetts residents most want answered? I believe those are:

  1. What is the risk?
  2. Where are people getting sick?
  3. How many people are sick?
  4. How many people are under quarantine?

To answer those questions for our audience, I created an easy-to-update Infogram display where my teammates and I can easily and quickly update the answers whenever new data is released by state health authorities. I hope this will simplify our workflow and become a useful home base for daily updates on the status of the virus in Massachusetts.