Revealing the Impact of Everyday Entrepreneurs

We regularly read about the far-reaching impacts of corporate giants. But millions of Americans are also hard at work at their mom-and-pop stores, home offices, studios, or favorite cafes, and the unique economic contributions of these small-but-mighty microbusinesses, nonprofits, and side-hustles are often overlooked. To fill the knowledge gap, web service provider GoDaddy worked with academics to author a new study about these ventures, and Schema created a dynamic website with interactive data visualizations to share their findings (with the Storied Future contributing to the content strategy). Through the Venture Forward website and its visualizations, the public can now discover data on how these everyday entrepreneurs positively impact US cities, correlate their presence with key economic factors, and more.

Accessible and Engaging Data Visualizations‍

When GoDaddy approached Schema, they had compelling data on close to 20 million entrepreneurial endeavors that had been analyzed by the University of Arizona and University of Iowa, but they needed to visualize the information to effectively share their findings publicly. With the overall site design, Schema created images of the US—including a 3D, extruded map and information-dense interactive visualization—that grant users greater understanding of this economic class. As part of the visualization design process, Schema dug wholeheartedly into the data, and found that in addition to providing a broad geographic look, visualizing business venture density by zip code would make them more concrete and searchable. They also discovered that being able to view metrics like a community’s recovery from the recession in conjunction with an area’s density of small business ventures unveils additional conceptual connections. The website design guides users through key insights from the study—that a density of ventures is predictive of economic prosperity, for instance—while the interactive map allows users to explore the data freely and uncover more stories.

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