On Innovation

This week we launched the Better/Worse Life Project, which looks at population growth, unemployment and median income across the country over the past 30 years and uses that data as a background to frame the very simple, open question ‘Is life in your state getting better or worse?’

It uses your IP address to automatically detect your county and state so that we can ask you about the area that’s most relevant to you at the moment.

After we have your vote, we ask for a couple of simple demographics – age and race – and display a visualization that shows where your state falls on the scale from better to worse based on the votes we’ve gathered. You can then filter the responses based on race and age, or sort the states based on unemployment, median income or population growth, to see if there is trending based on these metrics.

This is one of the first projects to take users opinions and mash them up with actual data to see whether perceptions match up with reality.  It’s a fascinating window into how people feel about the places where they live and a forum for a conversation around how things are changing.

There are already some patterns emerging.  We are starting to see that, in general, more states with high unemployment are being rated ‘worse’ by users, and more places with low unemployment are being rated ‘better’. 

D.C. stands out – though unemployment is high, 83 percent of users (as of publication of this post) ranked it better. One left a comment after rating it ‘better’: “DC is better due to a higher number of permanent residents, community activism, and better stewardship. Welcome to the 21st century!” The comments on why people voted the way they did have been some of the most interesting results of the project we’ve seen so far.

This kind of presentation can be risky. It’s so dependent on user feedback that if no one participates, there will be nothing interesting to look at. But it’s worth the chance – the kind of fascinating information we can gather once it does get going is possible only when you open the doors to participation from users. We’re collecting information on counties in addition to states so that, if we get a lot of responses, we can display a profile of the state that shows whether residents think counties are getting better or worse. It is going to take a lot of responses to get feedback for over 3,000 counties, but it might be possible with your help.

Right now, we have about 4,000 responses, but we need many more. Rate your state here: http://wapo.st/betterworselife

- Kat Downs / Innovations Editor for Graphics