Crime in Chicagoland
Data! Context! Analysis!
April 23, 2014
Heather Jay Billings / @hbillings
Chicago Tribune News Applications
Our audience
Highly flexible data == need for a clear audience definition
- Locals who want a picture of crime in their neighborhood.
- Locals moving to a new neighborhood, or people moving to Chicago
- Community leaders & stakeholders
- Academics, students, niche media
- Policy-makers & political figures
"How bad is it?"
Reported crime incidents aren't a total picture of crime.
Some crimes are historically underreported.
Our goals
- Extend the Tribune's crime reporting to data.
- Provide context to data so that numbers become stories.
- Show trends over 13 (and counting) years of data.
- Help readers find information about incidents near them which might not get a full reporting treatment.
The data
Pluck "index crimes" out of incident-level data
The data
Roll up to categories
The data
Generate time series
The data
Publish to an API
The data
Display and enjoy!
Community areas
Community area pages are the heart & soul of the site
Community areas
Most recent information first makes it easy for those who visit a community area page regularly
Community areas
Longer-term data & demographic information is further down the page.
(People doing research are more likely to scroll if they need to.)
Colors
Colorblind-friendly & not tied to meaning
Front page
A place to collect related Tribune crime features & display rankings
Navigation
Navigation
Suburban data
11 years of data from the Illinois State Police
Responsiveness
Breakpoints? We don't need no stinkin' breakpoints!
Responsiveness
Not "mobile first," but "mobile aware"
Responsiveness
Charts: display the information you have real estate for
