I created a database and various visualizations to reveal different aspects of Title IX investigations at higher educational institutions. The site aims to share insights and find missing information around a procedure that is often confusing and lacks transparency.

Process

Data Source, Web Scraping, Photoshop Batch
Data for open Title IX Investigations are gathered from the Office of Civil Rights' "Pending Cases Currently Under Investigation at Elementary-Secondary and Post-Secondary Schools as of March 17, 2020, Search" (View Link). Only data from post-secondary institutions are used in this project. 

Tuition, the institutions' physical location is scraped from Google Searches using Puppeteer.js. Promotional images for each institution are scraped with a Python script using Selenium. Images are blurred using due to ethical reasons. After processing and cleaning the data, I compiled and formatted it into a GeoJSON file for visualization.

Prototype
To understand the data, I first created a prototype to filter all currently open Title IX investigations at higher educational institutions by different categories. I co-opted the language of U.S. Top colleges ranking lists that are published every year. The outcome was informative, but not very engaging and feels very cold.

︎ Explore Prototype

Interviews

I conducted interviews for feedback over Zoom and email. Many of these feedback informed my design and framing decisions: 

• Added survey component
• Redesigned visual
• Added disclaimers and reframe project to clarify that the data does not represent a full picture
• Added intro page for context
• Blurred scraped photos for privacy concerns

Sections

1. Open Cases
Map visualization of all currently open Title IX investigations at higher educational institutions. Schools are ranked in the number of total open cases, in descending orders. Details regarding the cases by clicking the school or the individual marker on the map.

2. History
Brief history and recent development of Title IX, with archival images.

Live update of latest #TitleIX related tweets are displayed at the bottom of the page and are linked to the specific tweet.

3. Filing Process
Information about the process of filing a Title IX complaint, and common mishandlings supported with OCR investigation results and court case documents.

I created diagrams and flow charts to visualize the thought process and filing process. I chose to use supportive language, reminding viewers it is also ok to not file a case and it is important to take care of themselves.

4. Missing Data
In 2015 and 2019, the Association of American Universities conducted surveys to access campus climate regarding sexual misconduct. While they evaluated students' confidence in their institutions, it did not reflect survivors' lived experiences. This survey is set up to fill that missing data, once completed, results from a real-time database is visualized to reflect a collective sentiment.

5. About
Write up of methodology, references, and data sources.

A compiled JSON file of all open Title IX investigations is available for viewers to download and explore the data.

Credits

This project would not have been possible without the generous help and adivce from Mimi Onuoha, Marina Zurkow, Genevieve Hoffman, David Rios, Sukanya Aneja, Mark Lam, Jaekook Han, Emily Lin and Louis Wheatley.