Nearly $1 billion was spent in 2011 buying wheat, sorghum and other products for controversial US "in-kind" food aid programs. Bocoup worked with the Guardian to create an interactive exploring which companies won food aid contracts, what they sold, and where it went.
The Guardian - US Food Aid Interactive
The Guardian
Harnessing interactive data visualizations to engage readers with global news
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Challenge
The Guardian is an award-winning publication covering American and international news for a global, mobile audience. Nearly $1 billion was spent in 2011 buying wheat, sorghum, and other products for controversial US "in-kind" food aid programs. The Guardian approached our Data Visualization team to create an engaging interactive visualization to enable readers to explore which companies won food aid contracts, what they sold, and where it went.
Solution
The Bocoup Data Visualization team collaborated with the Guardian journalists, data scientists, and designers to design and build a narrative around data resulting from the Guardian's investigations. Together, we designed the interaction and built the interfaces and data visualization components. In addition, we created the Storyboard library to enable better assembly of interactive flows (see the Miso Project).
Impact
Our work on this interactive enabled the Guardian to share months of investigative reporting on the funding of US food aid programs. It also enabled us to create a reusable library that has been used in other projects to weave together interactive flows.
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