IHME

IHME, an independent population health research center at UW Medicine, is a global leader in health metrics with a mission to improve health policy by sharing its evaluations with policymakers around the world. As a designer, I bridged the often wide gap between the medical and the political by telling stories with IHME’s important data.

The Maternal Health Atlas is a (live) microsite dedicated to helping policymakers reduce maternal mortality rates through data. I worked as the sole designer alongside content managers, data analysts, and developers. The policymaker audience informed every decision when it came to clear typographic hierarchy (to make the takeaways clear), and in the simplicity of the interactive data visualizations.

Infographics often accompany the publication of reports using IHME data. Part of IHME’s mission is reaching beyond the global health community; these infographics help facilitate that. They may be translated, and/or disseminated and shared across many news publishers.

While considering what is the most important narrative to tell and through what charts and data, I worked closely alongside researchers, editors and writers to create the final products. Work went through many rounds to ensure the right data and story was communicated in the appropriate manner.

I had the privilege of creating the cover graphics and flowing the layouts of IHME’s two most sought-after reports: Financing Global Health 2016, or FGH (containing a technical report and a policy report), and The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2015 policy report. Hundreds of international collaborators and partners of IHME receive physical copies of the reports, and they are also available online.

Similar to infographics, gifs are a platform that allow data stories to be told to broad audiences in an even more concise way. These animations are not only satisfying to create when the story is clear, but are also an important part in making IHME’s important findings hit home. In a world where data is abundantly available, platforms like the gif can communicate which data is important and why. Their wide audience meant that these gifs were often shared by both news outlets and notable medical journals like The Lancet. Before my arrival the team I was on had started experimenting with data storytelling through gifs. My experience with AfterEffects allowed for complexity and nuance that was not possible before.