kat hartman

These 6 infographics in 3 languages, were designed to support the social media campaign for a joint Policy Paper from the EFA Global Education Monitoring Report and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. As countries work towards universal primary and secondary education through the new Sustainable Development Goals, there remains a funding gap that threatens to slow progress.  The international community will have to dramatically increase aid to education for countries with the greatest needs in order to reach these new goals. While international aid to education increased slightly in 2013, it is currently below the levels reached in 2010.

Process involved reviewing spreadsheets, curating photos, designing visualizations, and iterating through data stories with partners.

Working with Save the Sound, a bi-state program of Connecticut Fund for the Environment, I partnered with NiJeL to design and develop the Sound Health Explorer, a tool to increase understanding of water quality conditions in Long Island Sound and to activate local and regional solutions to improve those conditions. This first iteration of the Sound Health Explorer focuses on the health of Long Island Sound’s coastal beaches and the bacterial pollution that leads to beach closures and water quality degradation. The tool paired the bacterial data with other datasets that further characterize our waterfronts and may assist in identifying contributors to local pollution problems. Rainfall is also featured on the site, allowing you to see which locations suffer from bacterial contamination as a result of wet weather overflows and runoff, and which locations suffer bacterial contamination in dry weather as well.

Roles: User Experience and User Interface Design, Wireframe Development

Visit the Sound Health Explorer Site

Building off of my research for a civic tech column for Model D, I was asked by Garlin Gilchrist II, the City of Detroit’s Deputy of Technology Director for Civic Community Engagement from the office of the CIO, to document and visualize the civic tech ecosystem in Detroit. Together we presented on this work as guests of the Quello Center at Michigan State University, as part of their ICT4Detroit research.

Presentation with the Quello Center.

The Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) is a center for planning and development within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP).

CoLab supports the development and use of knowledge from excluded communities to deepen civic engagement, improve community practice, inform policy, mobilize community assets, and generate shared wealth. In 2014 they asked for assistance in redesigning their Annual Report to make it more concise and visual.

I served as project manager for this project. Sean Coté and I worked together as the design team.

View the entire 2014 CoLab Annual Report.

Working with NiJeL, I assisted with UX design for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s DUSP Explorer. This interactive set of 4 data visualizations mapped research collaborations among the faculty at the Department of Urban Studies + Planning. As NiJeL’s Information Designer, I helped the student and faculty led team at DUSP research additional design options to compliment the initial rounds of design and development work done by Ben Golder, a DUSP Masters Student at the time. In addition, I led efforts to design on-boarding instructions, textual details, and the Projects-based hive plot visualization, allowing users to explore connections by research project, faculty, and topic.

Visit the DUSP Explorer.

As part of a Fellowship with the Civic Data Design Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I assisted  NiJeL with the update of the NSF funded City Digits project, combining administrative and business data with qualitative student-led research in an interactive learning tool.  This collaborative project among the Civic Data Design Lab, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and CUNY’s Brooklyn College develops, pilots, and tests innovative resources and tools that support high school students’ learning of mathematics.

The Cash City tool is a visualization of the spatial patterns of AFIs, or alternative financial institutions (i.e. pawn shops, cash checking, wire transfers), in New York City.  It is a site for discussion about how AFIs affect local communities. Cash City is the second module of the City Digits project, an effort to develop place-based curricular modules that investigate and analyze specific themes related to the local, urban context to support high school students’ learning of mathematics. The curricular modules are enhanced by the integration of geo-spatial technologies, which enable students to explore their local urban landscape, collect field data, and organize and visualize patterns.

While not the primary UX designer, I assisted with the major design questions that arose while the site was in development. I also assisted with user research and testing both with teachers and students.

As a recent Schara Resident through the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art + Design, I was able to engage with Detroit students and teachers to integrate art and design into existing curriculum. Through the generosity of the Michele Schara Artist & Designer in Residence Program, part of the Stamps’ Detroit Connections Program, I was able to propose and complete a project with an art teacher at the Detroit Community High School in the Brightmoor neighborhood.

The robotics course I collaborated with was an arts course requiring students to “build art that moves and lights up.” This structure allowed for tangible application of core STEM concepts while injecting the arts to enable and engage different types of learners.  The STEAM (STEM + Arts) approach we used in designing and developing an illustrated reference on foundational physics concepts was grounded in materials and applied experience, in order to help students better grasp the connection these concepts have on the built-world.

The illustrated zine was based on the chapter: Power Transmission: Getting Power to Your Wheels in Build Your Own Combat Robot by Pete Miles & Tom Carrol

Thanks also to Jeff Herbstman who edited the zine for accuracy.

Throughout Detroit, there is a clear need among families for better information about how the education system works. This is particularly crucial among families with young children who are about to enter our city’s complex and highly segmented education system. Additionally, the research is clear that kids who go to pre-school are much more successful than kids who do not.

With all this in mind, Excellent Schools Detroit asked for assistance to build awareness about the three major options for affordable pre-school for low-income families in Detroit: Head Start, the Great Start Readiness Program and a statewide Child Care Subsidy. I worked with Libby Cole and Kikko Paradela through The Work Department, a Detroit-based design firm. Using a human-centered approach, we gathered input from parents and education experts to inspire the content and design. We then tested prototypes with both English and Spanish speaking parents to inform the final product.

My Roles: Policy & Program Research Lead, User Research & Testing, Design Team

Download a pdf of The Early Kid Gets Ahead!

As a consultant for Data Driven Detroit (D3), I worked as the UI/UX designer for the conCensus project funded through the Knight Foundation Prototype Fund. This online data portal seeks to stitch together top-down administrative data with bottom-up community gathered data, allowing grassroots organizations to share their data and connect with a larger city narrative. Additionally it would serve as a hub to identify data gaps, needs, and dreams, inspiring collaborative data-driven decision making at multiple levels. Human centered design is a fundamental piece of these Knight funded prototype projects; our project team did significant user research with community data activists at Focus:Hope and Warren-Conner Development Coalition.

Watch a video about the project here.

The Urban Innovation Exchange (UIX), an initiative funded by the Knight Foundation, showcases and advances Detroit’s growing social innovation movement. While I was at Data Driven Detroit (D3), which serves as the data partner for UIX, I acted as Project Manager of the UIX project. The project team created a survey to better understand innovators’ backgrounds, their projects, their support network, their perception of Detroit, and what they require to be successful. We then analyzed the survey data and the innovators’ support networks. Network analysis was done using Gephi.

My Roles: Project Manager, Data Design and Development, Survey Design and Implementation, Data Analysis, Data Visualization, Blog Author.

I wrote the following Insights for the UIX blog:

Using data to inspire innovation and inclusion
November 08, 2012

The skills required for innovation
April 12, 2013

Funding innovation
June 22, 2013

The purpose of this regional scorecard is to provide a comprehensive look at the status of the Detroit region through key indicators that align with the five priority areas of One D: Economic Prosperity, Educational Preparedness, Quality of Life, Social Equity and Regional Transit. While at Data Driven Detroit, I served as the Project Manager on the OneD Project, overseeing its second and third iteration. I also developed the UX and created wireframes to lead internal discussions.

My Role: Project Manager, Data Design & Development, User Experience, Front-End work, & Wireframing.

While at Data Driven Detroit (D3), I designed the print version of the K12 Scorecard for Excellent Schools Detroit. The ESD Scorecard allows parents to assess school quality and compare Detroit kindergarten, elementary, middle and high schools across a consistent set of indicators. I helped summarize essential information from the online version into an accessible print version. Complex information included school data and the methodology uses to calculate grades. Extensive participatory user research was done with a variety of Detroit parents to determine the most convenient format, literacy level, and preferred information to be included prior to initial design. Iterative and human centered design will be employed in another round of user testing in 2014.

My Role: Participatory User Research, Data Cleaning & Management, Design & Layout.

Data Driven Detroit (D3) has been working hard to communicate to stakeholders and potential partners throughout the region why data is essential for making informed decisions. Data can be an abstract concept. In order to make data more accessible, I designed these infograpics to help tell the D3 story. They are meant to be used as part of a presentation.

My Role: Designer and Editor

Citing the fragmented nature of Detroit data, The Skillman Foundation asked Data Driven Detroit to  compile a significant number of child-related indicators into one document, to provide a baseline. This report would be used to monitor and evaluate regional progress and also be updated on an annual basis.

My Role: Project Management and Lead, Editor, Additional Data Analysis, Visualization, Design & Layout.

In an effort to impact the quality of life for Detroit children, the Skillman Foundation has developed and delivered strategic plans and investments in several Detroit neighborhoods. Data Driven Detroit (D3) provides technical support to many of the related activities and planning.

While at D3, I worked with an intern to develop automated profiles to provide attractive demographic profiles for the Skillman Foundation’s neighborhoods that could be easily updated as data changed. We worked together to develop the necessary code in R (an open source statistical program) capable of producing attractive charts and graphs. Using Data Merge in Adobe InDesign we then automated the placement of text and visuals. The result is an attractive design that can be updated relatively quickly at relatively low cost.

My Role: Project Lead, Basic R Programming, Data Mangement within Adobe Data Merge, Design & Layout

While at Data Driven Detroit (D3), I was intent on improving the design of our materials and publications. The 2011 D3 Annual Report marks one of the initial steps I took with the organization in this respect. This publication built off of our analysis work throughout 2011, but redesigining it so there was a more consistent aesthetic. It was inspired by the annual report & calendar developed by another NNIP partner in Boston: MAPC.

My Role: Data Development & Design, GIS Mapping, Creation of Charts & Graphs, Design & Layout

During my 3.5 years at Data Driven Detroit (D3), I assisted as both a Project Manger and as the Communications Manager. As the Communications Manager, my major role was to ensure that our publications and designed materials were of high quality and extended the D3 brand. While D3 culture promotes staff autonomy and freedom to develop their own products, I regularly provided feedback on design decisions. These included our website and interactive tools, data visualizations, charts & graphs, and  design & copy of white papers and reports. I also served as the editor of both the newsletter and the blog.

Included here are some of the projects on which I provided feedback and support during my time as the communications manager:

While interning with a social policy advisor at UNICEF Botswana in 2008, I spent the majority of my time analyzing data from the 2005/06 national child labor survey. A few years later that research was published in 2 separate publications.

My Role: Assisted with the development of analysis framework and data analysis, Developed basic summary charts & graphs, Writing and editing preliminary reports.

Child Work & Child Labour in Botswana: Analysis of Results from the 2005/06 Labour Force Survey

Thari Ya Bana: Reflections on Children in Botswana 2011

UNESCO's Institute of Statistics commissioned this interactive project to establish a baseline on Sustainable Development Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

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