Dan Nolan

Visual Designer
User Experience Designer

DJN monogram
Project:

Concussion Watch

Year:

2015

Roles:
  • user experience
  • visual design
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Concussion Watch is an interactive database and visualization that tracks the number of concussions in the NFL. This project was originally designed and launched in 2012. Since it was one of FRONTLINE’s most highly trafficked and continuously updated interactives, we decided to refresh the design and make it responsive along with the redesign of the FRONTLINE website.

I was responsible for evaluating the existing user experience—deciding which parts of the flow to keep and where we needed to revisit. We kept the core of the experience in tact but cleaned up the layout, improved the hierarchy of information and made interface clearer.

After I spent many months designing a system of components for the FRONTLINE website redesign, this was an opoortunity to apply the new visual language of the site to a more specific context with this interactive.

FRONTLINE deals with serious and sensitive topics. Designing for data and reporting about concussions was an exercise in restraint and minimalism. While the FRONTLINE site is dominated by photographic imagery and video, the design here needed to be clean and bold and driven by typography, so the concussion numbers could stand alone without distraction.