Designing a crucial conversation

Jay Janner | Austin American-Statesman

This week’s community forum was the final stage of an unorthodox approach to reporting on relations between Austin’s police and African American communities.

James Barragán approached the interactives team late in 2016 to brainstorm digital presentations for a package including videos by Reshma Kirpalani and his analysis of racial issues in Austin. They wanted to provide context and help readers empathize with those communities.

James and Andrew Chavez used video with the Statesman immersive template on the award-winning project Casualities of the Streets, but it was quickly agreed that James and Reshma’s storytelling deserved a unique, user-focused presentation. That decision not only resulted in fresh color palettes and logos but also cross-platform stories.

Christian convened a design sprint with members of the Statesman’s digital, metro, photo and editorial departments that produced a list of ideas including a social media campaign and the live community forum. This sprint established stakeholders who provided feedback over weeks of iteration as the digital and print presentations took shape.

Portraits and snapshots of Austin’s black community were vital to introducing readers to the story. Reshma and her photo department editors, James Gregg and Nell Carroll, directed the use of visuals and took over an office to lay out all the photography.

Reshma collected hours of interview audio in addition to her portraits, and audio-visual projects by the Seattle Times, NPR, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Buzzfeed inspired us to test different techniques. Our design iterations guided us to a side-by-side layout that used KnightLab’s SoundCite to create a pseudo dialogue between members of Austin’s police and African-American communities around common themes.

We dedicated our full print and digital design energy to building empathy with Austin police officers and black residents, but the community forum enabled emotional connections in a different way. The emotion Reshma captured in her videos was on display in a television studio as guests including police chief Brian Manley, activist Meme Styles and family members of David Joseph spoke from their perspectives. I listened from the audience and found, even though the event was intentionally constructed and closely moderated, I could feel the tension in the room. The event was streamed on Facebook, but I think you had to be there to get the full effect.

The Talk taught our team the importance of page speed and meaningful user interaction, but I think the project will also encourage us to emphasize connections to the people, places and topics we cover in future digital efforts.