SoAYR
Status of African Youth Report · African Union
Product Designer · African Union · 2021 · 8 months
How do you turn youth development data locked in a Power BI file into something governments, researchers, and partners can actually use?
The Challenge
The Status of African Youth Report tracks how AU Member States enable youth across employment, education, health, and governance. The data existed—but it lived in a Power BI file that was hard to access, slow to share, and intimidating for anyone who wasn’t an analyst.
Without a public, digestible view, the insights risked staying locked away instead of informing policy and youth programs.
Approach
Design a web-first experience that turns dense dashboards into something explorable, comparable, and shareable—while staying on-brand for the African Union.
- Navigation across five AU regions and four development pillars without losing orientation
- Plain-language insights and chart templates developers could populate from the backend
- AU visual identity, modernized for the web
- Print-friendly, exportable views for briefings and partners
Key Design Decisions
Decision 1
Region-first navigation
The Decision: Start with five AU regions, then country, then pillars—not a flat list of 55 Member States.
Why: A continent-scale dataset overwhelms on first load. Region → country keeps the map approachable and matches how AU stakeholders already think about the data.
Result: Hover previews and in-place country loads keep users oriented while they explore.
Decision 2
Chart-led landing over motion map
The Decision: Ship a calm, chart-led entry instead of a motion-led map that spotlighted random countries.
Why: Clarity beat spectacle. Policymakers needed to understand what SoAYR offered in seconds—not wait for animation.
Tradeoff: Less visual drama on first paint; faster comprehension and a clearer path into the data.
Decision 3
Plain-language pillars + exportable proof
The Decision: Surface Youth Development Index (YDI) beside four spelled-out pillars—Employment, Education, Health, Governance—and make every indicator exportable as a clean PDF.
Why: Internal codes (DD1–DD4) made sense to analysts; they failed for everyone else. Briefings needed citeable visuals, not screenshots of Power BI.
Result: Same visual language from screen to PDF—insight to handoff without leaving the flow.
The Experience
A policy advisor is preparing a briefing on youth employment in West Africa. She opens SoAYR, selects the region, then Ghana. Pillar cards show Employment and Entrepreneurship alongside YDI in context—not buried in a spreadsheet.
She drills into an indicator, compares the story the charts tell, and exports a PDF with the same visual language as the dashboard. The file is ready to cite in the briefing—no analyst required to unlock the data.
Interface Design
Landing directions
Two hero concepts tested with the AU team. Chart-led won for immediate clarity; the motion map was retired.
Region and country
Region-first map interaction: preview countries on hover, load data without breaking orientation.
Dashboard
Fixed region and country controls, pillar tabs at the top, color-coded cards for scanning. Tuned for readability and export.
Structure before polish
Low-fidelity flows aligned the team on core scenarios before visual investment: region → country → pillars → indicators → export.
Exportable reports
PDF exports reuse the dashboard visual system so indicators can be cited and shared outside the tool.
Validation
A usability round with 23 participants shaped the final handoff. Feedback drove concrete changes—not vanity metrics.
- Navigation: 18 of 23 found the flow straightforward; feedback led to adding dashboard search.
- Intuitiveness: 17 of 23 understood the journey on first use; expanding DD1–DD4 into full pillar names reduced confusion.
- Usefulness: 20 of 23 said the presentation made the data actionable; exports were especially valued.
- Aesthetics: All 23 responded positively to the clean, AU-aligned look.
Outcome
SoAYR shipped as a public-facing experience on the African Union web presence—taking youth data out of Power BI and into a browser anyone could open.
The live site has since been taken down. The interaction model and visual system remain documented in the prototype.
Key Learnings
What worked
- Region-first navigation made a continent-scale dataset feel approachable
- Chart-led entry set expectations faster than a motion-heavy map
- Matching PDF exports to the dashboard visual language made the product useful beyond the browser
What I’d do differently
- Spell out pillar names from the first prototype—internal codes don’t travel
- Prototype search earlier; orientation failed for some users without it
- Test with non-analyst stakeholders sooner, not only after high-fidelity polish
Core insight
- Data products succeed on translation. The hard problem isn’t the chart—it’s making institutional data speak to people who will never open Power BI.
