The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor is a global partnership of 34 leading organizations that seek to advance financial inclusion. CGAP develops innovative solutions through practical research and active engagement with financial service providers, policy makers, and funders to enable approaches at scale. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP combines a pragmatic approach to responsible market development with an evidence-based advocacy platform to increase access to the financial services the poor need to improve their lives.

We partnered closely with CGAP to create reports that tell the story of their organization, it’s work, and its compelling impact. Our use of superb photography, logical structure, and world class visual design enables us to bring CGAP’s annual reports to life while creating user experiences that engage stakeholders (donor countries, international development experts, economists, educators and the public) in productively understanding what they do, how they do it, and why its' important.

As part of our broader program development for UNDP Right Now!, the United Nations Development Programme asked us to design and develop a map-based tool for exploring their economic development programs. Our approach engages users with a well-structured, meaningful, and visually impressive interface to complex program metrics.

This enables site visitors to simply and powerfully manipulate and visualize data according to their own needs and preferences for at-a-glance understanding of financial impact.

ImaginePittsburgh is the region’s digital hub for career exploration that connects users to 25,000+ positions and provides real-time information about trending occupations, salaries, and more. As a regional economic development platform, the website supports users in exploring what this great city has to offer from the three rivers lined with hiking/biking trails to the hot new food scene and affordable real estate, to the fulfilling jobs that make it all possible.

In close collaboration with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Informatics Studio developed an online strategy and design for ImaginePittsburgh, a web-based tool for career exploration, and thereby economic development, in the Pittsburgh region. Developed using a suite of open-source tools and data feeds, the website connects visitors with over 25,000 open job postings and provides real-time data on regional trends, high-demand occupations, salaries, and projected growth rates.

Informatics Studio was asked by our partners at Chevron to design and develop a comprehensive report that tells the story of regional stakeholders’ attitudes and beliefs toward STEM science education and its impact on regional development. This was a challenging project in which, through our structured program evaluation and user-centered design, we were able to develop clear and compelling visualizations that illustrate levels of understanding and receptivity towards STEM education with clarity and insight

While most of our work with economic development is built around concrete data, we were challenged to clearly illustrate more subjective information hidden within attitudes and beliefs within specific communities.