| home page | data viz examples | Visualizing Government Debt | critique by design | final project I | final project II | final project III |
Portfolio: hparmar-dataviz-portfolio
Shorthand link: View my Shorthand story
This write-up documents how my final data story, From Stability to Strain: How Rising Costs Are Outpacing Student Earnings, evolved during Part III of the project. Rather than repeating work from Parts I and II, this section explains how earlier sketches, datasets, user interviews, and design tests informed the final version of the story. It also highlights the revisions I made, the audience I designed for, and the choices that shaped the final Shorthand narrative.
Based on instructor feedback, I revised the conclusion to make the call to action more focused, meaningful, and actionable. Instead of ending with general observations, the final section now outlines specific steps institutions can take to support students. I also added direct links to real resources — including federal aid, state programs, university support, and community-based scholarships — so readers can immediately explore the options available to them.
To improve interpretability, I added reference lines to key years — particularly 2021, a turning point when housing and food costs rose sharply due to inflation. These visual guides help readers quickly recognize when financial pressures on students intensified.
Feedback showed that the narrative worked best when following a clear progression:
Rising day-to-day living costs
Rising education costs
The widening gap between expenses and earnings
Reorganizing the story around these three chapters made the narrative cleaner, more intentional, and easier for readers to follow.
Earlier drafts relied heavily on visuals paired with long paragraphs of written explanation. In Part III, I shifted toward concise captions, short definitions, and annotations that allow the visualizations to communicate more of the story on their own. This improved pacing and clarity within the Shorthand experience.
Some economic terms — particularly CPI — were unfamiliar to several readers during user testing. Adding brief definitions directly beneath the charts helped keep the story accessible for students and young adults without a technical background.
The project is designed for:
current college students,
recent graduates, and
young adults preparing for higher education.
These are individuals directly affected by shifts in wages, inflation, and tuition costs. To better understand this group, I developed three personas during Part III: a current student balancing work and expenses, a recent graduate repaying loans, and a prospective student evaluating affordability. These personas helped test whether the story addressed the questions and concerns that matter most to them. This audience is directly impacted by rising living and education costs, so designing a story that is clear, relatable, and easy to understand was essential to ensuring the insights were meaningful for them.
I walked individuals through my storyboards and early draft charts. Each person fit the demographics I was targeting. Their feedback was helpful in refining the flow and sharpening parts of the narrative.
The CPI charts were intuitive and immediately relatable.
The earnings-vs-cost chart had the strongest emotional impact.
Several people wanted more context behind the tuition numbers.
Some transitions felt abrupt and needed smoother framing.
Condensed call-out text worked better than long explanations.
User interviews, persona development, and early storyboard reviews helped me refine my narrative and make the visual story clearer and more relevant for students and young adults. Based on this feedback, I made several focused updates:
Added short definitions (like CPI) directly under charts to reduce confusion.
Reordered the narrative to follow a natural progression: living costs → college costs → the financial gap.
Strengthened transitions between sections so the story feels continuous rather than segmented.
Added concise annotations and call-outs to highlight important insights without long explanations.
Clarified why NCES tuition averages appear lower than typical tuition “sticker prices.”
Simplified long paragraphs into shorter, more readable pieces.
Refined the final call-to-action slide to offer practical next steps for colleges and institutions.
Overall, these changes helped make the story more grounded, easier to follow, and directly aligned with what my audience said they needed.
Working through Part III gave me a deeper appreciation for how data stories evolve. A strong narrative is not just a collection of charts; it is the result of careful decisions about pacing, emphasis, audience needs, and visual clarity. The combination of interviews, personas, and design iteration helped turn the original idea into something more focused and meaningful. I intentionally used simple, muted colors and direct on-chart annotations to keep the visualizations easy to interpret and to ensure the focus stayed on the trends rather than on decorative elements.
This stage also reinforced how important it is to balance data with real-world context. Rising costs and stagnant earnings are not just economic concepts — they affect day-to-day choices and long-term opportunities for students. Keeping this human perspective in mind shaped the way the final story reads.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025). Consumer Price Index: Housing and Food Series (CUSR0000SAH1, CUSR0000SAF1). Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
National Center for Education Statistics. (2025). Table 330.10: Average undergraduate tuition, fees, room, and board rates charged for full-time students in degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by level and control of institution. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/
National Center for Education Statistics. (2025). Table 503.20: Percentage of full-time and part-time undergraduates who worked, by control and level of institution. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/
National Center for Education Statistics. (2023). Digest of Education Statistics: Student Financial Aid and Earnings Data. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/
College Board. (2024). Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2024. Retrieved from https://research.collegeboard.org
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (2024). Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. Retrieved from https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. (2021). Learning While Earning: The New Normal. Retrieved from https://cew.georgetown.edu
I used Grammarly to review my written work to verify that it was clear, grammatically correct, and tone consistent throughout. I used Copilot to organise my storyline and brainstorm titles/headings.
This project ended up teaching me far more than I expected. I started with a simple idea — show how student costs are rising — but turning it into a clear and meaningful story took a surprising amount of iteration. User interviews, personas, and early sketches helped me realize how important it is to focus on what actually matters to students, not just what looks good in a chart.
I didn’t get to explore everything I hoped to, but I’m proud of how the narrative came together. If I had more time, I’d dig deeper into financial aid trends and regional differences, since affordability varies so much by place. The biggest thing I learned is that good visual storytelling is less about the visuals and more about empathy — helping people understand an issue in a way that feels real and relatable.
Overall, I genuinely enjoyed building this project and seeing how each piece connected to the next. It was challenging, but in the best way.