A Long Road Website
Soul of Athens is a series of multimedia stories created by undergraduate and graduate students at Ohio University. Photojournalists, web developers and designers collaborate on teams to cover topics in and around Athens, Ohio.
Our team reported on medical access in Southeast Ohio, focusing on transportation. We included perspectives from patients and health care professionals on our website through infographics, videos, a 360 photo, photos and text.
This project required research from many different angles to fully understand the situation. I led team discussions where we decided how to find our story. We started by talking to two health professionals, Ruth Dudding and Sherri Oliver. They informed us about social determinants of health, issues they have seen and how they help the community. We used online research and asked other contacts about medical access issues in the area. Our plan was to use personal stories to represent the access problems and resilience of Southeast Ohio residents.
We got in contact with an EMT and were able to interview the director of Athens County EMS. We used Oliver’s knowledge about Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine’s (HCOM) mobile health clinic and connected with the contacts Oliver referred for information about the truck, searched for more information on Hocking Athens Perry Community Action (HAPCAP) and contacted the mobility manager about the operation. It was challenging to talk to patients because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
Mockups
Version 1
Our first set of mockups featured usage of Reveal.js. We planned to have a vertical scrolling landing page to showcase information from professional sources and then three separate horizontal scrolling pages for the three individuals’ personal stories.
Version 2
When struggling to obtain a certain amount of personal stories along with feedback from the class, we transitioned to a singular vertical scrolling page that combined the personal stories and the researched content.
Version 3
After coming up with a color palette and fonts, we incorporated that into the UX/UI design of our website. We continued with the vertical scrolling page but also added an intro page to set the scene for our 911 call video. This is the point at which the site showed all of our media elements including our maps, the 360 photo, illustrations and our video introduction page.
