Inspiration
I’ve centered my project around showcasing the reality of student loan debt in America.
Let me give a background of my initiative. The weight of educational expenses has become an undeniable burden on individuals striving to build a better future through higher education. And as student loan debt in the US has reached staggering levels, we are promised debt cancellation to some degree; however, other motives seem to take priority.
With this visualization, I’d like to remind everyone of the crisis individuals and families face with the financial burden taken on. Users can explore the total student loan debt balance of each US state.
Afterwards, I present 2 ideas of how we can come together and tackle loan repayment without having to chase the dangling carrot from members in office.
I encourage you to explore these ideas while navigating my project.
I’d like to see which idea gets more traction, so I know in what direction I can take my initiative. Segment helps me by tracking user interaction of these information cards. And for this simple prototype, I choose to analyze this data as the more traction an idea gets, the more interested that user is. I can get an immediate first-impression of my ideas without relying on user surveys!
How we built it
The visualization is built with d3.js. I’m using AWS S3 to deploy website, and Twilio Segment to track user behavior and interaction.
Challenges we ran into
One challenge I ran into was setting up events in Segment. I didn’t seem to understand the existing documentation around attaching the track function to certain event calls on my website.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud of connecting Segment to my website! That took a while for me to understand lol.
What we learned
I learned a lot about the integration of data flow between the front-end and the back-end of websites.
What's next for Student Loan Debt Visualization
In the future, I’d like to polish the design of the website and the data visualization. I’d also like the data viz to be more interactive, allowing users to select a state for more detail information about student loan debt. I’d also attach that interaction to Segment and track how engaging the visualization is.
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