Case Study: Designing a Workforce Dashboard that Empowers Users and Elevates Equity
Across the workforce development sector, more and more organizations are looking to create dashboards to help them understand labor market and student enrollment data through visual storytelling. At the same time, we’re also seeing some common challenges across existing data visualization tools, particularly:
Data is all over the place. Public agencies (local, statewide, and national), workforce providers, and community and technical colleges are all required to collect important data. However, integrating and aligning data from multiple workforce players can be complicated and time consuming.
Data analyses and visualizations are not centered on a goal of increasing equitable outcomes. This can unintentionally reinforce the status quo instead of elevating the voices of underserved communities who are in need of support.
Data is difficult to understand. Often, this is because tools and visualizations aren’t designed for decision-making and instead have either too much detail or not enough.
When we were asked to build a dashboard for Educate Texas, our team spent time reflecting on the challenges we’re seeing across the field, as well as brainstorming how we could build a product that represents the values of our firm. In partnership with Educate Texas, we aligned on five core principles to center in the design and development of the PowerBI-based WE CAN TEXAS Data Dashboard. We feel these principles are important for any dashboard project and lead to better outputs.
1) Infusing equity with every page
The team began the process of designing the Educate Texas dashboard by trying to answer the question: “how do we center equity on every page?” Today, data is power and we wanted to ensure our visualization highlights disparities driven by systemic inequities and enables users to make informed decisions about where to explore further. Many underserved communities have not traditionally had access to public and private sector leaders, and data is one way to uncover and frame systemic inequities that affect communities deeply.
We prioritized data disaggregated by race/ethnicity, gender, and income status whenever possible, and equity measures were used to put data into context. Disaggregated data were found for postsecondary outcomes to show which students were underrepresented at each level. To demonstrate labor trends, livable wage data from MIT and the University of Washington were used to show the differences between average wages and what it costs to live sustainably in a particular county or metro area in Texas.
We found that disaggregated data is often not readily available in labor or education topic areas. Data collection methods seem to be lagging behind the desire to look at how outcomes vary across groups. Our hope is that future versions of this dashboard will include more disaggregated data.
2) Decision-oriented
One of the best – and worst – things about being a leader right now is the sheer amount of data available at your fingertips. With all the data available, it's not always easy to tell what is important and what is a distraction. Our goal is to identify and include data to drive specific decisions. Including data for the sake of data can make a dashboard unapproachable. At best, extraneous data will detract from the story your dashboard is trying to tell. At worst, it will reduce the trust users have in your dashboard as they are faced with a tool that is confusing and cumbersome.
For the Educate Texas project, we worked with our client to identify a set of priority users in the workforce sector. We drew on our past experience with workforce data, and collected user and stakeholder feedback to prioritize data points that would be actionable for those decision-makers. Wireframes were drafted so for the client to see how the data would be displayed. The goal was to ensure that the message on each page was succinct and pointed to an actionable outcome (e.g., What are the top jobs in my county and do we have educational pathways to meet that demand?).
3) Putting data in context
It’s easy to make assumptions, or get stuck, on data if you aren’t familiar with the context. When constructing a dashboard, anchor points are critical to helping the audience put data into context. For example, when reading the daily news, you may see “the Dow Jones added 100 points today,” but unless you know how many points the Dow started with and what the average trends are (or are a day trader), it’s hard to know if that is a big increase! The same is true with the labor and education data used for this workforce dashboard. It’s not enough to share how many jobs are in Dallas County or in the technology sector, you need to also understand how many people live in the county and how big the workforce is in Dallas to make sense of the number.
In order to help contextualize the information in the dashboard, “data anchors” were used to add framing points to the data. This included sharing population data, the unemployment rate, and the number of postsecondary credential holders next to the more detailed data on the dashboard. The inclusion of this information not only gives more context to specific data points but also helps tell a deeper story when the data is filtered.
4) Usability and simplicity
As consultants (and data nerds), the Kinetic West team will be the first to admit that we think dashboards are cool! (Feel free to judge us). At the same time, we have come across dashboards that have left us more confused than informed. The charts, language, and information were not intuitive.
We set out to make a dashboard that anyone (even those outside of the target audience) could intuitively understand, use, and pick up the key messages. We achieved this by focusing on simplicity and consistency. The Educate Texas dashboard uses basic chart types that most people have seen before. As much as possible, jargon was minimized or clearly defined on the homepage or using endnotes. Consistent layout and design also helps users navigate. Users are seeing new data on every page, but the layout, color scheme and chart type are held constant. Additionally, the navigation, filters, and data anchors were mirrored on each page to create a consistent look and feel that eliminated the need to reorient yourself on every page.
When something is too complex (even if it looks awesome), it’s often inaccessible and limits the impact you can make.
5) Ability to “double-click” on data
Being able to “double click” into data means that you are able to look deeper into different dimensions of what’s being shown. For example, if you are tracking new Coronavirus cases and it is only available at the national or state level, you won’t have a good idea of what’s happening in your local community. In fact, your local community could be experiencing a very different trend than your county or city.
The ability to double-click means a dashboard is relevant to more stakeholders across Texas, across industries and occupations, and across the postsecondary continuum (e.g., high school, community colleges, apprenticeships, etc.). For this dashboard, data was shown statewide and by county, metro, and workforce development area in order to give a more detailed view of workforce trends in different parts of the state. Labor demand filtered into 22 industries (NAICS codes) and 811 occupations (SOC codes) where stakeholders could get detailed information on current employment, projected employment, and annual wages. And educational outcomes included registered apprenticeships (active and completed), postsecondary enrollment and completion, and CTE participants and concentrators.
Going forward
While Kinetic West is a firm that prides itself on being able to perform data analysis, build dashboards, and conduct technical analysis, the core of who we are resides in our ability to understand what leaders need to make decisions and ensure our work resonates with the people it is intended to serve (both clients and communities).
Data visualization is a powerful tool and requires intentional planning to achieve its potential of empowering organizations to accelerate their impact in their communities. Kinetic West is a firm with deep data experience and a passion for solving tough problems. Whenever you’re ready, we are excited to partner together.
About our client
Educate Texas, an educational initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas, is the trusted change agent to strengthen Texas public and higher education. For more than a decade, they have worked side by side with partners to empower students to realize their dreams and fuel a thriving Texas.
The WE CAN TEXAS Data Dashboard is a tool for decision-makers across Texas to understand regional labor market demand and education/training system data in order to empower them to understand regional performance, assess the progress and effectiveness of new initiatives, drive regional investment and prioritization decisions, and serve as a baseline for what data is and is not available today.
