Dec 16, 2022
Scrollytelling
Cops Practicing Medicine
MISSION
According to the Cato Institute, "government and law enforcement increasingly surveil and influence the way doctors treat pain, psychoactive substance use, and substance use disorder." We recieved a large collection of content—including a 13,000-word white paper, transcribed interviews with physicians and patients, and written & video testimonials—exploring the topic & its policy implications. Our goal was to synthesize the material into a single-page "scrollytelling" experience which engaged readers with historical background and first-person accounts to humanize the issue.
ROLE
Digital Producer & Lead Project Designer
APPROACH
The content needed heavy curation in order to tease out a narrative arc; I used the white paper text to craft the overall structure of the piece and used the multimedia assets as supplements, and used Figjam to storyboard. With the approval of the scholar, I selected an aesthetic direction inspired by turn of the century advertisements; "black-and-white with red" color palette was used throughout, with the red repsenting the idea of chronic pain. Additional assets (such as vintage advertisements) were procured from various online image repositories. The "2019 raid" section and video testimonial embeds were handled by the Design Director; I constructed the majority of the page in Drupal 10 with small amounts of custom CSS.
RESULT
We amplified the deeply impactful stories of patients & doctors while not overwhelming users with content. High-impact visuals brought the historical portion of the piece to life; multimedia testimonials from doctors and patients in the second half elevated the piece from a policy discussion to a truly human story. Testimonials were presented in formats that the user can opt to engage with as they scroll—choosing to play a video, tapping to view a full story, or swiping across multiple cards of text.
