Project tags
Mapbox
Non-profit
Government
Dashboard Embed
Data Journalism
Core TEAM
Me: Design Lead
Lesley Huang: Development
Sam Vickars: Project Management
tools
Overview
A non-profit grant project powered by ACLU West Virginia’s Dragline publication, Police Accountability Dashboard sheds light on police misconduct throughout the state, highlighting the reasoning for and the movements of various police officers across departments and call for better accountability of their actions.
I designed a Mapbox interactive map and subdomain website to bring this important data to life, making it explorable and understandable to audiences, such as lawmakers and local West Virginians.
Client goals included improving public awareness and to add to the narrative a broader push for law enforcement transparency and accountability across the U.S.
Using the map modes, users can choose how to render the data on the map based on their purposes in using the tool. Here, using the Active Departments mode, users can pinpoint where the largest departments in the state are located and law enforcement concentrations in areas with higher populations or resident demographics.
Process
I started with moodboards. The final decision was to use ACLU branding to craft a minimal yet engaging visual language akin to the Dragline publication aesthetics, gently blending the two across font and color. The impact of the serif with the editorialized feel of the san serif font created a nice balance of authority and approachability.
The data piece involved exploring and analyzing it’s components and complexities. We’d need to be able to parse the data into an easily filterable map for a database of hundreds of entries over time.
I created two moodboards for the client to choose from. The minimal and clean look was preferred. I also evaluated other data tools in this space and explored the different ways they approached complex data layering in a way that is accessible and simple.
Narrative
How could we separate the data into easily understandable pieces?
Filtering
What criteria needed to be filtered to meet client goals in balance with what made sense to those who were using the tool?
Data Hierarchy
What data points were most and least important to surface and how should they be presented in the map dashboard?
I also had to make accessibility considerations around data layers, making sure the dots and map elements were distinguishable from each other.
In an internal accessibility review and after a meeting with the grantors, I opted for a color scheme that was colorblind friendly, and incorporated hatching to the dots for inactive departments to help differentiate them from the data layers beneath and from the active departments aside from color alone.
Challenges
There was a lot of complexity in the data, and figuring out what the main takeaway and story we wanted to tell was difficult. There was a concern that all the layers of information and filtering options would be overwhelming. There were also some data errors and redundancies we flagged to contend with that were rectified by the client before launch.
Users can search for individual officers to determine where they were last active, their employment history, and reasons for leaving that department. Making sure the data presented was clean and accurate was very important to render the map correctly.
With the population demographic piece, the client wanted to highlight how those differences in county demographics had an effect on the concentration of police headquarters, highlighting where officers with career misconduct worth investigating were employed. Some demographics we considered mapping seemed less relevant and were scrapped before the final data set was compiled.
Overall, if I were to redesign this again, I would reduce some of the data complexities or break out the data into smaller modules to be absorbed in a more narrative-based format to make correlations clearer.
Results
ACLU West Virginia successfully launched this campaign in 2025 and released press coverage detailing how the dashboard was making an impact at the county level in the state. They've used the dashboard to report on police misconduct via their dragline publication, including this report tracking the movements of the police officer who killed Tamir Rice in 2014.
“All across the country, police officers are given huge amounts of authority and very little oversight,” said ACLU-WV Executive Director Eli Baumwell. “West Virginia is no different. And we’re excited to be able to increase transparency in law enforcement by turning public records into a publicly accessible database.”
Want to work together?
I’m looking for my next opportunity. Currently open to hybrid or remote full-time and contract roles.
© 2026 Aria Todd | Made with Framer
Project tags
Mapbox
Non-profit
Government
Dashboard Embed
Data Journalism
Core TEAM
Me: Design Lead
Lesley Huang: Development
Sam Vickars: Project Management
tools
Overview
A non-profit grant project powered by ACLU West Virginia’s Dragline publication, Police Accountability Dashboard sheds light on police misconduct throughout the state, highlighting the reasoning for and the movements of various police officers across departments and call for better accountability of their actions.
I designed a Mapbox interactive map and subdomain website to bring this important data to life, making it explorable and understandable to audiences, such as lawmakers and local West Virginians.
Client goals included improving public awareness and to add to the narrative a broader push for law enforcement transparency and accountability across the U.S.
Using the map modes, users can choose how to render the data on the map based on their purposes in using the tool. Here, using the Active Departments mode, users can pinpoint where the largest departments in the state are located and law enforcement concentrations in areas with higher populations or resident demographics.
Process
I started with moodboards. The final decision was to use ACLU branding to craft a minimal yet engaging visual language akin to the Dragline publication aesthetics, gently blending the two across font and color. The impact of the serif with the editorialized feel of the san serif font created a nice balance of authority and approachability.
The data piece involved exploring and analyzing it’s components and complexities. We’d need to be able to parse the data into an easily filterable map for a database of hundreds of entries over time.
I created two moodboards for the client to choose from. The minimal and clean look was preferred. I also evaluated other data tools in this space and explored the different ways they approached complex data layering in a way that is accessible and simple.
Narrative
How could we separate the data into easily understandable pieces?
Filtering
What criteria needed to be filtered to meet client goals in balance with what made sense to those who were using the tool?
Data Hierarchy
What data points were most and least important to surface and how should they be presented in the map dashboard?
I also had to make accessibility considerations around data layers, making sure the dots and map elements were distinguishable from each other.
In an internal accessibility review and after a meeting with the grantors, I opted for a color scheme that was colorblind friendly, and incorporated hatching to the dots for inactive departments to help differentiate them from the data layers beneath and from the active departments aside from color alone.
Challenges
There was a lot of complexity in the data, and figuring out what the main takeaway and story we wanted to tell was difficult. There was a concern that all the layers of information and filtering options would be overwhelming. There were also some data errors and redundancies we flagged to contend with that were rectified by the client before launch.
Users can search for individual officers to determine where they were last active, their employment history, and reasons for leaving that department. Making sure the data presented was clean and accurate was very important to render the map correctly.
With the population demographic piece, the client wanted to highlight how those differences in county demographics had an effect on the concentration of police headquarters, highlighting where officers with career misconduct worth investigating were employed. Some demographics we considered mapping seemed less relevant and were scrapped before the final data set was compiled.
Overall, if I were to redesign this again, I would reduce some of the data complexities or break out the data into smaller modules to be absorbed in a more narrative-based format to make correlations clearer.
Results
ACLU West Virginia successfully launched this campaign in 2025 and released press coverage detailing how the dashboard was making an impact at the county level in the state. They've used the dashboard to report on police misconduct via their dragline publication, including this report tracking the movements of the police officer who killed Tamir Rice in 2014.
“All across the country, police officers are given huge amounts of authority and very little oversight,” said ACLU-WV Executive Director Eli Baumwell. “West Virginia is no different. And we’re excited to be able to increase transparency in law enforcement by turning public records into a publicly accessible database.”
Want to work together?
I’m looking for my next opportunity. Currently open to hybrid or remote full-time and contract roles.
© 2026 Aria Todd | Made with Framer
Project tags
Mapbox
Non-profit
Government
Dashboard Embed
Data Journalism
Core TEAM
Me: Design Lead
Lesley Huang: Development
Sam Vickars: Project Management
tools
Overview
A non-profit grant project powered by ACLU West Virginia’s Dragline publication, Police Accountability Dashboard sheds light on police misconduct throughout the state, highlighting the reasoning for and the movements of various police officers across departments and call for better accountability of their actions.
I designed a Mapbox interactive map and subdomain website to bring this important data to life, making it explorable and understandable to audiences, such as lawmakers and local West Virginians.
Client goals included improving public awareness and to add to the narrative a broader push for law enforcement transparency and accountability across the U.S.
Using the map modes, users can choose how to render the data on the map based on their purposes in using the tool. Here, using the Active Departments mode, users can pinpoint where the largest departments in the state are located and law enforcement concentrations in areas with higher populations or resident demographics.
Process
I started with moodboards. The final decision was to use ACLU branding to craft a minimal yet engaging visual language akin to the Dragline publication aesthetics, gently blending the two across font and color. The impact of the serif with the editorialized feel of the san serif font created a nice balance of authority and approachability.
The data piece involved exploring and analyzing it’s components and complexities. We’d need to be able to parse the data into an easily filterable map for a database of hundreds of entries over time.
I created two moodboards for the client to choose from. The minimal and clean look was preferred. I also evaluated other data tools in this space and explored the different ways they approached complex data layering in a way that is accessible and simple.
Narrative
How could we separate the data into easily understandable pieces?
Filtering
What criteria needed to be filtered to meet client goals in balance with what made sense to those who were using the tool?
Data Hierarchy
What data points were most and least important to surface and how should they be presented in the map dashboard?
I also had to make accessibility considerations around data layers, making sure the dots and map elements were distinguishable from each other.
In an internal accessibility review and after a meeting with the grantors, I opted for a color scheme that was colorblind friendly, and incorporated hatching to the dots for inactive departments to help differentiate them from the data layers beneath and from the active departments aside from color alone.
Challenges
There was a lot of complexity in the data, and figuring out what the main takeaway and story we wanted to tell was difficult. There was a concern that all the layers of information and filtering options would be overwhelming. There were also some data errors and redundancies we flagged to contend with that were rectified by the client before launch.
Users can search for individual officers to determine where they were last active, their employment history, and reasons for leaving that department. Making sure the data presented was clean and accurate was very important to render the map correctly.
With the population demographic piece, the client wanted to highlight how those differences in county demographics had an effect on the concentration of police headquarters, highlighting where officers with career misconduct worth investigating were employed. Some demographics we considered mapping seemed less relevant and were scrapped before the final data set was compiled.
Overall, if I were to redesign this again, I would reduce some of the data complexities or break out the data into smaller modules to be absorbed in a more narrative-based format to make correlations clearer.
Results
ACLU West Virginia successfully launched this campaign in 2025 and released press coverage detailing how the dashboard was making an impact at the county level in the state. They've used the dashboard to report on police misconduct via their dragline publication, including this report tracking the movements of the police officer who killed Tamir Rice in 2014.
“All across the country, police officers are given huge amounts of authority and very little oversight,” said ACLU-WV Executive Director Eli Baumwell. “West Virginia is no different. And we’re excited to be able to increase transparency in law enforcement by turning public records into a publicly accessible database.”
Want to work together?
I’m looking for my next opportunity. Currently open to hybrid or remote full-time and contract roles.
© 2026 Aria Todd | Made with Framer