Summary: Reflecting on the theme of Black History Month, in 2023, to our sisters, I created this scrollly telling piece, talking about the impact of single mums in my community.

Context: In 2022, there was a rise in a number of podcasts that framed rather negative narratives around the role of single mothers in the lives of kids. These comments tended to be around several podcasts owned and pushed by influencers who tend to talk around topics catered to masculinity and the like. With all the conversations online tending to be rather negative, I had a question: is the actual perception people have, or is this just the voice of a few loud individuals?

This laid the foundation of the project, To Our Mothers, a data story around the audience’s perceptions on motherhood and how the role of mothers impacted them

Gathering & Curating Data:

I created a Typeform survey that was sent out to my community members for 2 weeks. In that time, I managed to get 70 responses. This was saved in Typeform and then exported to BigQuery.

Within BigQuery, I then processed the data, creating queries to reform the data so it can be looked at with JavaScript and created multiple views, which will then be called when needed within the front end of the microsite.

Research, Direction, concept & development:

I researched UK reports to understand the state of single motherhood in the UK and better see whether it is enough of a story to actually create something about. And it was! A number of articles center on how single parenthood varies by demographic and age, which I used as references to anchor the story.

I then went through the survey results, doing an EDA to see how the audience responded to the questions and what would be good to share with a reader to better understand the type of audience I was working with. Regarding color systems, Black History Month already had a design system, which I then hijacked for my site.

I searched the web for inspiration for the project. I liked Stefan Pullen’s work scrolling through earthquakes, and wanted to mimic the effect. I wanted to have an interaction at the end for people to hover and see the messages they learnt from their mothers. The result is the final work; see the Link.