Sprint 1: Crime Trends

Research plan

• Sprint 1 Plan🔒
• Sprint 1 Conversation Guide🔒
• Sprint 1 Folder🔒

User group

Journalists, criminologists, and other crime data experts

Priorities

Our research suggests there are 2 main types of users for the CDE: novice and expert consumers. While “novices” may prefer a more guided experience through the data, “experts” will likely require the flexibility to search, view, and consume the data in a number of ways. We also hypothesized that in order for the CDE to promote awareness and transparency around the UCR program, it would need to appeal to media and advocacy groups that may or may not be fluent with the data, but have influence over the public’s perception of crime in the United States.

Key questions

Given these insights, our first sprint will explore how a journalist might use the CDE to explore crime trends in California and compare them with the national average. While we won’t explore every aspect of this scenario during our first sprint, we believe it is an appropriate starting point for prototyping because it will help us learn more about a key user group and will therefore inform future sprints.

Related questions we will start to explore (but not fully answer) during sprint 1 include:

• How do journalists prefer to navigate through the data?
• What are the characteristics of an effective interface for filtering search results?
• How might results be displayed? When are charts, maps, or tables appropriate?
• How can data be presented in a way that provides sufficient context for interpretation?
• What kinds of caveats and supporting details are useful and in what circumstances?
• What level of granularity can the data support, in terms of analysis and visualizations?
• Given the limitations of the data, is mapping useful?
• In what other ways might the limitations of the data constrain our design?

Scenario

Carla is a journalist. She is investigating a story on crime rates in California. She comes to the CDE to find data that supports her hypothesis that crime is rising in urban areas. She hopes to compare local data to state and national trends.

Key quotes

“I would want to get to the primary source, see what you’re looking at, get to the CSV file, and proceed from there.”

“For the general public, the top of this page is a good start. But for reporters, or data nerds like myself, I want to get my hands dirty.”

“If the FBI could start mapping ORIs, or at least list them to FIPS, that would be really helpful.”

“Every reporter is looking for a story nobody has.”

“What’s the numbers?...Where are the counts?”

What we learned

• Context is everything.
• People want to see the math behind the data. Rates are useful, but we should show counts or formulas on hover for more detail.
• Journalists find the charts useful, but mainly want to drill into the data downloads.

Next steps

• Learn more about CSVs and how people plan on using them outside of the CDE (for example: combining them with census data sets, dumping them into a tool for data analysis).
• Look into data limits. At what point does a CSV become overwhelming?
• Research FIPS, census, and ORI mapping. People want to search by city and law enforcement agency.