Carousel: How to showcase WTF spendings?

[Weihua4455]

I guess the ticket title is a bit misleading. We initially talked about building a carousel to showcase some of the WTF ARPA spendings we came across. Here's a spreadsheet for that, and the story draft where we plan to use it.

After talking to @katiepark, @bo-won and @rdmurphy, I think we're back to the drawing board to rethink the carousel approach. Below are what I think we're hoping to achieve, and a couple of approaches that came up in discussions.

Goals

• [ ] Showcase a set of WTF spendings
• [ ] Easy for people to scan through
• [ ] Provide some context for each one (population, total spending, etc)

Ideas

• Carousel / click-y cards
• Fine more WTFs, auto-locate the user, we show them a WTF from their state
• A “show me another” button too that would pull a random spending from the pile
• A scrolly treatment — horizontal scroll through cards, or a scrolly map that jump from locations to locations.

I'll spend a couple of hours today to make some sketches, though I think we're still deciding what the approach should be. Let's keep the discussion in this ticket, so we can keep the conversation all in one place!

[katiepark]

Just an update on our end — we think it'll work okay if you want to adapt the carousel code from LWOP or FORCECHILDREN, with some additional guidance from Bo-Won based on what she and Ryan learned in their work on the carousel. @bo-won can get in touch with you about that!

One thing to note about the code from LWOP/FORCECHILDREN is that it still uses jQuery, so you will either need to convert it to vanilla js or import jQuery in your file (import {$} from 'jquery';). I'd also love us to track the carousel usage, so I'm happy to advise on that in a code review!

[Weihua4455]

Thank you, Katie! That's really helpful. I'm chatting with Bo-Won this afternoon.

And absolutely, no matter what approach we choose, let's definitely track the interaction so we'll have more information. Once I have more code written, I can open up another ticket & hack more on that.

[eads]

I don't see a scrolly treatment as feasible for this -- that really gets us into custom build territory, and I don't want to create additional pressure for custom builds rn. I don't know that a bunch of cards laid out horizontally work, either, because it breaks up the story too much in my estimation.

I'm happy with any decision that's not too resource-intensive, but I do really like the idea of:

• Something that autolocates and shows you a WTF card based on it.
• A big "show me another" button.

We're developing far more systematic ways of exploring this data, some of which could potentially be publishable, but here I think this would be kind of fun and interesting and might encourage obsessive clicking.

[eads]

One advantage of "show me another" is that the plumbing is basically in place from BADSTATS interactive. I can take on adapting that code which should free up @Weihua4455 to dig for more interesting WTFs, and then I can hand it off to her.

[Weihua4455]

Recapping from the ARPA check in today with @susie-c and @anastasiajourno:

• @susie-c and @eads will talk more about the two approaches (51-state auto-detection vs carousel) and decide, hopefully by the end of today, on which approach to go with.
• The 51-state approach will require more dev and research work, but it's a pretty exciting idea. @susie-c offered to research and find one WTF/CJ spending on each state plus D.C. @Weihua4455 will lead on the front end development, with help from @eads
• Either way, it should not change or delay our goal to publish the ARPA SPENDING piece by Friday.

[Weihua4455]

Circling back to this, from @susie-c: "we're going with the 50 states + DC locator tool + show me another instead of the carousel."

I talked to @bo-won this afternoon about some of the design thinking around something like a card or a carousel. The general summary is we should lean into something that is short and sweet, give readers an example to tease them about what some of the ARPA CJ spendings are, but not stop them from continue reading.

Bo-Won created a few sketches in Figma. I will start with development with a dummy file next week, while Susie continues finding and putting projects in Airtable.

[eads]

If we're just doing "Show me another" we don't need all 50 states. If we were shy a few states, it would be OK. I don't think it will be that hard to find one per state tho.

@Weihua4455 you're saying carousel or WTF roulette, we can use the same general card design correct?

[Weihua4455]

That's my though exactly on the card: I love the information hierarchy possibilities with the card, and would love to continue using that + a "show me another" interaction.

Looks like Svelte has a card component as well.

I am under the impression that we want to find one for each state, plus D.C. But really I think that depends on if we want to go with the auto detection route. Having one for each state makes more sense if we do. @susie-c is planning to take that on. Happy to reopen that discussion.

[susie-c]

I think 50 states + DC and a "show me another" button can still be short and sweet, and I really like the location detection if you all can swing it, but I defer to you there.

I am quite a ways through on pulling projects into the Airtable already, I'm aiming to have it done by EOD.

[eads]

I made some progress on design edits @Weihua4455 -- they're on the 0026-random-carousel-eads-edits branch.

If we like the progress with this, though, we can ticket up some additional tweaks:

[Weihua4455]

That looks awesome, let's ticket up more tweaks!

[eads]

Biggest one imho is more markup and logic for budget vs. obligation. Right now, that's too simplistic vis a vis what we've discussed.

It would be nice I think to put the source line in a fixed position at the bottom of the card.

[Weihua4455]

I was tackling this last night but got distracted, this is what I have for the source line:

Source: State and local governments are required to report how they are spending the American Resecue Plan funds to the U.S. Department of Treasury. While the federal government does not specifically track criminal justice-related spending, The Marshall Project selected a sample of ARPA spending on criminal justice by conducting keyword searches on the project descriptions that local government wrote.

Each project reported to the Treasury has multiple spending columns attached, including total cumulative expenditures (how much money was already spent), total cumulative obligations (how much money the government promised to spend) and adopted budget (only reported by large cities and states at this point). Experts The Marshall Project interviewed recommended using obligation as the most accurate way to show how much was spent on each project, and use budget when obligation is not available.

It's kinda long, but I think accurately reflects our methodology. I was planning to put this after the card purely because of length.

[eads]

yeah hmmm, we might need to split that up or something

[Weihua4455]

Maybe leave it to the nerd box at the bottom of the post?

[eads]

I think that's the move. See #54