Census Intelligence Center
Aiding Local Governments in Census Outreach
Overview
Beginning in the summer of 2019, I led research and design on the scaling of the then minimally viable Civis Audience Center, a lightweight, configurable (read: templatized and flexible) data visualization tool that enables users to explore cleaned and modeled population data, define subpopulations, and target audiences for outreach and activation.
One of Audience Center's primary use cases for the first half of 2020 was as the Census Intelligence Center (CIC). Leading up to the 2020 Census, CIC fueled the Census outreach and campaign efforts of more than 25 organizations comprised of cities, states, non-profits, and agencies.
At Civis, I worked in a product squad alongside a technical lead, a product manager, and three engineers. Our squad was autonomous, and I led research and design on Audience Center from mid-2019 to late 2020. All of my design decisions were made in tandem with the product and technical support of my team members. That said, I was the sole designer for this project, and unless otherwise stated, the work and thoughts displayed here are my own.
A Count That Shapes a Nation
The Census is one of the most complex and critical operational challenges of each decade; to execute it involves the mobilization and allocation of resources at a speed and magnitude similar to elections and wartime. Ensuring a complete count is as important as it is difficult. Results of the Census are used for political reapportionment and redistricting, federal funding distribution of more than 1 trillion dollars, business decisions, and much more.
A Decade-Defining Big Data Project
Ahead of the 2020 Census and due to heightened concerns about accuracy and participation, even before the added complications of COVID-19, local governments and advocacy organizations across the country developed strategies and outreach efforts to maximize counts in their localities, particularly amongst populations deemed hard-to-count by the United States Census Bureau.
For a complete count committee, executing effective Census outreach has four main stages.
plan
Understanding a place and its population using all available data
organize
Prioritizing resourcing where it's needed most
message
Identifying the most persuasive things to say for a given population
report
Evaluating the effectiveness of campaign efforts and making changes
Adapting a CPG Application for a Public Sector Use-Case
The minimally viable version (MVP) of Audience Center was a simple list-cutting tool focused on the activation workflow for CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands. Activation, in user, speak, means: "Show me, people, in my customer base with x, y, z attributes, and a, b, c behaviors and tell me who they are so I can go talk to them."
Customers using the MVP went through a linear process of defining audiences, visualizing results, and activating by pushing lists of people to external applications like Facebook.
These designs were done by another designer at Civis who worked on the MVP
Part 1: Research
While the Census is undoubtedly a big data project, in terms of its execution, data-driven decisions on a local level are not guaranteed. In government and advocacy spaces, the natural pioneer of a data-driven approach, the data scientist, is often outnumbered one-to-many by analysts, policymakers, and outreach coordinators. Their small numbers, in combination with bureaucracy, silos, and their limited ability to directly act on their findings, perpetuates two primary challenges that Civis was positioned to solve:
Delivery
Getting data into the hands of people with the power to affect change at the right time
This could look like delivering a model of the hardest-to-count Census tracts in a state based on metrics such as the tract's poverty level, access to the internet, and the percent of its population that does not speak English to the organizer running a door-to-door messaging campaign in that Census tract)
Interpretation
Ensuring accuracy in the conclusions drawn by available data
Census tracts are hard to count for different reasons. One tract might have average access to the internet but fewer English speakers, suggesting the need for bilingual online messaging. Another tract may be mostly English-speaking with low internet penetration, signaling the value of an outreach event for folks to fill out the Census at a local library.
Meet the Complete Count Committee
The Data Scientist
Data folks face logistical hurdles in getting data into the hands of those with the power to affect change, at the right time.
The Volunteer
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers and temporary workers face ever-changing environments as they work door-to-door and run events.
The Outreach Coordinator
Campaign directors at government agencies and non-profits develop plans for ensuring their localities get counted. Their access to resources is highly variable.
The Government Official
High-level stakeholders who both alleviate and uphold obstacles (depending on the context) to ensuring a complete count.
Resulting Design Philosophies
Dynamic Queries
The first version of CIC had a multi-step workflow that the user had to go through before seeing any visualizations. This version prioritized "dynamic" visualizations where the user could update filters to immediately see results.
Map First
Since Census outreach is so location-specific, it was important to center the map-based user experience as the primary mode of moving about the tool. There were other types of visualizations in the product, but the map was by far the most used.
Multi-Modal
Census Intelligence Center sat between stakeholders working at very different levels; it was important for the tool to work for data scientists loading in models while yielding a physical output that could be used by volunteers organizing events and going door-to-door.
Part 2: Design
During the design phase, I worked closely with the Civis government team to ensure the product met all the needs of our public sector workers. This included visits to Alderman and local officials at Chicago City Hall, and many calls to stakeholders on complete count committees in other states.
Census Outreach: Using CIC to "Get Out The Count"
Load Models
Once data scientists have cleaned and modeled data, they can load updated data into CIC for use by organizers.
Explore Populations
Organizers explore different populations and use the resulting data to make plans for resourcing and outreach in various localities.
Create Audiences
Users can create multiple data visualization layers to shape different narratives about target populations.
Save Audiences
Users save lists of audiences to target for specific Census outreach like events or door-to-door canvassing.
Ship Briefs
The tool ultimately yielded a PDF summary of an audience that could be printed out or emailed and sent to volunteers.
I went through a six-week sprint to get the initial product stood up for the cities of Chicago, Houston, and Long Beach.
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Part 3: Results
Evaluating Success
Census Intelligence Center received two honorable mentions in the Cities & Data categories in Fast Company's 2020 Innovation By Design awards.
25+
States and municipalities using Census Intelligence Center ahead of the 2020 Census.
20X
User growth between summer 2019 and Q1 2020.
3X
Reduction in the time it took for client success to delver new instances of CIC to clients.
"This tool has been immensely helpful so far."
City User
"We couldn't do all the things we do at our precinct without CIC."
City User
"If you aren't using CIC, you're really missing out on what's happening with the Census."
User on public sector Slack group
"It's really incredible, what you can see about how areas are performing."
City User