One project which I feel best represents my best work this semester is a magazine spread data visualization called “Obstetric Fistula: A Women’s Health Crisis.” I sourced the data from Makeover Monday's collaboration with Operation Fistula. The final spread details what obstetric fistulas are and how they affect women in developing countries. I am proud of how I combined data, writing, and graphic design crafting skills to create a comprehensive story.

One of the hardest parts of this work was finding a story within the original spreadsheet. Since the data about obstetric fistulas from Makeover Monday is a bit spotty, it was difficult at first to find ways to show just how problematic this issue is and why it is happening. I enjoyed researching more about the topic and finding interviews with women who have survived and/or are currently living with this injury, and I think the human-centered writing coupled with illustration helps the story feel more human rather than just centered around numbers or graphs.

There are several skills and programs that I used to create this project. I cleaned up the original data in Google Sheets for use in Tableau, “interviewed” the original spreadsheet to fully understand the data, wrote out a storyboard, and sketched several dashboards as preparation for the final spread. I exported scatterplots and maps from Tableau into Adobe Illustrator to craft the final. In the future, I hope to expand upon my skills in Google Sheets and Tableau so that searching for a story in datasets becomes easier in the future.

A few key steps in my process are shown below.

A storyboard of the ideas and statistics I wanted to include in my final project. I did not use all of the ideas here in the end product, but this process really helped me focus in on the topic.

Sketch of a dashboard before working with the data in Tableau

My Tableau dashboard before exporting to Illustrator

Sketch for the final spread

Next: What I Learned