CSY-005. A visual that shows the effect that an external challenge is having on a nonprofit program.

PROJECT COMPLETED: April 2019

“Weather vs. School Attendance Rates” | Data Visualization by David White

THE STORY OF THIS PROJECT

STAKEHOLDER’S PROBLEM: “We think we see something happening on the ground. We want to consult the data and have it either confirm our gut feeling or point us in the right direction.”

South Asian Youth Action (SAYA) is a 501(c)3 youth development organization based in Queens, NY. SAYA’s mission is to foster a strong sense of belonging in youth and provide them with tools to thrive academically, professionally and personally. It currently serves more than 1,500 kindergarten through college-aged youths throughout the City of New York.

As part of NYC’s Community Schools Initiative, SAYA partnered with Richmond Hill High School to operate a mentorship program designed to target at-risk students to improve their school attendance and prevent dropouts. Each week, SAYA’s program administrators and the school’s staff members who were serving as mentors, met to review student data and collaborate on ways they could better support the students enrolled in the mentorship program.

In the spring of 2019, the program’s mentors became concerned about the effect that weather was having on school attendance. They had anecdotal evidence that inclement weather or unseasonably warm temperatures were resulting in lower school attendance. However, they wanted a way to compare what they were witnessing individually to the overall data as a whole. To solve this problem, I designed and built an interactive data visualization that tracked the SAYA mentees’ school attendance against the weather conditions on each day school was in session.

Work Process:

Here’s the design process I used to complete this project—

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Case Study 005. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Weather vs. Attendance Tracker: Step 1
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)

Step 1 - Discovery

To begin the process of creating the visualization, I met with the administrators of the intervention program and the mentors who worked directly with the students. I listened to the concerns they had and we talked about the challenges they were facing. I began to form an idea of what information needed to be included in the visualization and what raw data needed to be gathered.

CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)
Case Study 005. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Weather vs. Attendance Tracker: Step 2
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)

Step 2 - Sketch

Next, I made a rough sketch of what the visualization would look like and what information would go where on the screen.

CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)
Case Study 005. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Weather vs. Attendance Tracker: Step 3
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Microsoft Excel
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Microsoft Excel

Step 3 - Prep Data

I collected the school’s attendance data and I joined it with local weather data published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Then I lined up the daily attendance data with the NOAA weather data for that school day.

CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Microsoft Excel
Case Study 005. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Weather vs. Attendance Tracker: Step 4
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau

Step 4 - Build

I built out the visualization using Tableau software. The final result would be projected on a large screen during the team’s weekly meeting and I felt that Tableau was the the best choice for that type of presentation.

CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau
Case Study 005. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Weather vs. Attendance Tracker: Step 5
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau
CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau

Step 5 - Publish

I published the finished visualization to Tableau online and I shared it with program administrators via secure link. During the team meeting, the visualization was projected on a large screen locatd at the front of the room. The visualization provided a common point of reference for the mentors and it was used to frame the conversation about their intervention work.

CSY-005, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau

Final Results:

 
case studies, data visualizationDavid WhiteSouth Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), correlation, line graph, Tableau, data graphic

3. Work Samples - Content | Work samples of data visualizations, data dashboards, websites, infographics, publication-quality reports, slide decks and visual presentations I've created (detailed)