Design, programming assistance Homicides map Published in The Washington Post, Oct. 14, 2012 As I designed this app, I was thinking about how to allow people to quickly find homicides in their area. That led to a decision to focus on neighborhoods. We let people see groupings of crimes that are meaningful to them in both the map and corresponding charts. To surface trends at a city-wide level, we added four promo spots above the map that send people directly to important stories in the…

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Design, programming, production Coming home a different person Published in The Washington Post, October 3, 2010 I worked closely with Whitney Shefte and Alberto Cuadra to create this piece. We storyboarded the intro video, motion graphics segments, and the flow of the piece together, then each created the individual parts. I built the interactivity around the intro page menu, the brain segment, and the package navigation. It features deep linking to each video, gallery, or multimedia segment. Tools used: Flash/ActionScript 3.0 with audio and video…

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Design, programming Better/Worse life project Published in The Washington Post, October 30, 2011 I worked with Dan Keating (database) on this project, which takes a unique approach to user-generated data. It mashes up responses from users with actual numbers on unemployment, median income and population growth to see how people’s perceptions line up with reality. A week after launch we had nearly 5,000 responses. We use IP location to target the experience to the user’s county and state, and ask them to make a rating…

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Design, programming 2010 Election Maps Published in The Washington Post, The Telegraph (UK), and Yahoo News, 2010 I created these three race maps (house, senate, and governors) to correlate with the redesign of PostPolitics. I also created a live results map for election night. We really wanted to give a complete picture of the 2010 races, so we have current race ratings (except for the House, where we have state of the race), election history, and demographics that let you see some cool patterns —…

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Design, programming Memories of MLK Published in The Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2011 I heard that Nikki Kahn and Megan Rossman had been out shooting interviews with civil rights leaders in advance of the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in D.C., and I approached them with the idea of doing a presentation that combined photography and videos and used the memories of those interviewed to tell the story of King’s life. I organized the memories so that they flowed through stages of…

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Design, programming I voted because… Published in The Washington Post, Nov. 6, 2012 This user-centered project launched on election day 2012. We asked people why they voted, created a customized button for them, then added that button into visualizations based on candidate, geography and topic. I developed the concept for the piece, designed the desktop and mobile applications, and built the mobile application — check it out on your phone! We got over 35,000 submissions. Tools used: JavaScript, Bootstrap, d3, CSS

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Design, programming, reporting, audio Rescue and recovery Published in The Washington Post, April 15, 2012 This is a really powerful piece looking at Virginia Tech five years after the massacre, through the lens of an iconic image of survivor Kevin Sterne. I did design, development, audio and wrote one of the segments of the piece. I love the simplicity and amazing story. Again, an awesome team effort with work from Ben de la Cruz, Bill O’Leary, Josh du Lac and others. Tools used: JavaScript, CSS

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Design, programming Top-secret connections Published in The Washington Post, July 19, 2010 This graphic visualizes the redundancy and relationships in Top Secret America. Specifically, it shows which government organizations do what types of top-secret work, and how many companies they work with. The centerpiece is the color-wheel, which allows users to sort the government organizations in three different ways. It also has individual views of each government organization, work type, and a couple dozen companies. It is all dynamically drawn, fullscreen capable, and utilizes deep…

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Design, programming The Battle of Wanat Published in The Washington Post, October 3, 2009 For this story about a battle in a remote part of Afghanistan that had greater implications for the war there, reporter Greg Jaffe came to us with a ton of found videos, photo and audio. I came up with the idea to do a horizontal pane timeline that would allow us to integrate all the media into one experience instead of breaking it up into several pieces. I built this horizontal…

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Design Say What? Published in The Washington Post, August 2012 I have been wanting to do a Twitter project for a while, and this time all the pieces fit together. After I pitched the idea, Cory Haik coordinated a partnership with VoterTide, a great company in Omaha that does aggregation and analysis of Twitter trends specifically around politics, that made the Twitter analysis segment possible. I designed the piece, and we were able to get two awesome developers, Leslie Passante and Jeremy Bowers, to build…

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Design, programming Fact or Fiction? Published in The Washington Post, December 2011 This card game is a fun way to expose all our Fact Checker columns. People can choose their own ratings and see past ratings for candidates. I designed and developed the main game, as well as the widgetized version of it that lives in the politics section. Tools used: Javascript, CSS More games: D.C. Budget Game, Make a royal match, How well are you aging?, Washington Metro art

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Design, programming Analyzing U.S. tax breaks Published in The Washington Post, September 18, 2011 This piece looks at all the tax breaks on the books in the United States, how much they cost and when they went into effect. It breaks down all the tax expenditures by category and value and highlights important movements. I created the charting, interaction and design of the javascript visualization at the top of the page. We focused a lot on adding an annotation layer to this piece, so it’s…

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Design, programming The Shooting of DeOnte Rawlings Published in The Washington Post, April 18, 2009 This project recreates the scene where DeOnte Rawlings was shot, and tries to lend clarity to what happened (there was debate about whether police had reason to shoot at him or not). Alex Garcia had shot some panoramas of the scene, so instead of just having them in a gallery, I suggested that we try to create a 3-D crime scene timeline, by using Flash Panorama Player’s hotspot technology. I…

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Photography, audio Everyone Calls Me Critter From the Carolina Photojournalism Workshop, March 2006 I did the photography and audio for this piece about a mud-racing mechanic on the eastern shore of North Carolina. I spent several days with Critter at his shop, at home and out and about in Newport. He’s an incredible character and he gave me an open look into his life. To watch, go here and click “Critter.” Tools used: Canon 30D, ProTools, Soundslides In the news: Endeavors Magazine More of my…

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