The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is a nonprofit association representing all 149 accredited U.S. medical schools, nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, and more than 80 academic and scientific societies, which in turn represent hundreds of thousands of students and professionals.

Faced with a massive set of data from these sources, AAMC started working with Forum One in 2014 to transform its biannual Diversity Facts & Figures report into a robust digital tool that presents information in a useful and compelling context for its multiple audiences. We worked closely with the AAMC team to craft report content that is easy for key audiences to explore and share, and clearly communicates the story of the strides made in medical school diversity and the work yet to be done. We also designed and developed the longform experience in WordPress.

Serving Multiple Audiences with One Massive Data Set

AAMC’s key audiences include everyone from specialized data researchers to casual readers, so our team worked to make the data presentation flexible and customizable. We designed the report for responsive viewing across devices, and included custom features that allow users to view the data in the ways that best meet their needs: at-a-glance, shareable infographics highlighting key takeaways; raw state and county data that researchers can sort, filter, and download; and interactive tables, charts, and graphs to explore data from multiple angles and spot trends.

Bringing Data to Life with WordPress

Our team selected and configured a suite of  WordPress plugins including TablePress, Visualizer, and Highcharts Cloud to give users more flexibility to explore, export, and share the data with custom tables, interactive charts, and animated visualizations, while making updates easier for AAMC’s content managers. We also created an interactive map showcasing national data, with the ability to drill down into state- and county-level figures. Behind the scenes, preset style guides make adding content and updating data as intuitive, fast, and accurate for AAMC’s content administrators as working with their usual text editor.

Engaging Audiences with Bold, Future-Ready Design

Our designs took a bold visual direction to feature dynamic color coding, modern fonts, and engaging interactions and animations. Our UX and visual designers considered how the data would display, how users would navigate through the report, and how the design would adjust to accommodate various devices.