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Schooloscope

Designed at BERG, 2010

Matt was lead designer for Schooloscope, a website that made UK schools data easier to read.

schooloscope-homepage

From dry data to simple sentences

Nearly every school in England had its own page on Schooloscope, which was generated from publicly-available data, such as Ofsted reports and performance tables. Schooloscope distilled this dry, numerical data into a set of simple, conversational phrases.

schooloscope-school-page

‘Show your working’

Each school page also showed how it was generated, allowing parents and kids to explore its source data and how it was interpreted.

schooloscope-prose-generator

schooloscope-data-source

The whole site floated on top of a map, to allow for easier search, comparison and serendipitous wandering.

schooloscope-map

‘Chernoff Schools’

Each school was also represented by an icon – a little school with a face on it. This was also generated from publicly-available data: the number of pupils (building size), academic performance (roof color), and ‘happiness’ (facial expression), which was derived from data about pastoral care, pupil enjoyment, and behavior.

schooloscope_chernoff_schools

This technique was borrowed and adapted from statistician Herman Chernoff, who pioneered visualising datasets using human features in the 1970s.

More than academic results

Schooloscope aimed to show that a school is more than just a set of test scores – that kids’ happiness and enjoyment is just as important as their academic results.

schooloscope-table-happiness

schooloscope-table-results

schooloscope-school-page

Literacy in data

Schooloscope ran from 2010-2012, and became a model for how open information and thoughtful design could help people become more literate in the public data that affects everyday life.

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