Washington State Legislative Reporting
Although I wasn’t officially working in the user experience (UX) space, I applied human-centered design principles to my work as a journalist. As a reporter at the 2017 Washington State legislative session, I wrote articles for over 100 newspapers across Washington state. These articles broke down complex laws and processes to increase public understanding and awareness.
Quick info
Timeline: January 2017 to May 2017
Location: The 2017 Washington State Legislative session
Problem
In 2017, over 40,000 K-12 public school students experienced houselessness in Washington State. There was little awareness about this large issue and the available resources.
Design question
How can journalism make the public more aware about student houselessness in Washington state and how current government programs impact this issue?
Objectives
Create articles that include a wide range of perspectives from people who are most impacted by houselessness — students and parents in the unhoused community
Break down government legislation and programs to help the public better understand the impact
Create content that can be adapted by local newspapers to show the impacts of student houselessness in their communities
My journey
Discover/define
I conducted secondary research by reading online articles to gain a foundational understanding of student houselessness and the solutions that aimed to solve the issue. To dive deeper into this topic, I interviewed:
Students and parents experiencing houselessness
Youth houselessness advocates and organizations
Senators and state representatives
While the politicians and organizations provided background on what the programs aimed to accomplish, it was imperative to speak with people who were directly impacted by houselessness to understand if these solutions were actually making a difference.
I synthesized my research and interview notes to write articles about legislation in the 2017 session that impacted the unhoused student community.
Develop
I applied content strategy best practices to my work to help my audience quickly find and understand information. Since we wrote for over 100 newspapers across Washington state, my audience had a wide range of educational and political backgrounds. Legislation often contains jargon and technical language, so I applied plain language to break down the information. This helped my audience more easily understand what the legislation aimed to accomplish and how it could potentially impact unhoused students.
I applied content hierarchy by placing important information at the top of the articles. This helped ensure that my audience read the most important parts of the articles, even if they didn’t read all the text. Additionally, it provided the audience with context on what information the article included.
I wrote these articles with an informative and clear voice that allowed local newspapers to easily adapt the articles to include the information their communities needed.
To further illustrate the how many students were unhoused, I pulled government records and analyzed the data using pivot tables.
Deliver
I wrote multiple articles about student houselessness that were published in newspapers across Washington State:
Other newspapers across Washington state adapted these articles to show the impact of student houslessness in their communities.
Results
One article was featured in The Atlantic and was referenced during public testimony to obtain funding for state grant. I received the Pioneer Award for Legislative Reporting for this work.