Whether you’re filling out a form or building it yourself, you should be aware that decisions about how to design a form have all kinds of hidden consequences. How you ask a question, the order of questions, the wording and format of the questions, even whether a question is included at all—all affect the final result.

The unintended ways that assumptions, perspectives and biases find their way into our work as journalists, designers and developers. We’ll look at how the decisions we make—what data to base our stories on, what form those stories should take, how they’re designed, who they’re created for—always come out of our particular point of view.

Adding more text is a bad way to compensate for bad design.

Yesterday morning, ProPublica announced two new projects: Electionland, a large-scale intiative to report on voting access and problems in the upcoming US elections, and Election DataBot, a comprehensive election-info data tracker and feed.

Discriminatory design and decision-making affects all aspects of our lives: from the quality of our health care and education to where we live to what scientific questions we choose to ask. Here are just a few of the many tangible, visual examples that humans interact with every day.

Last year, an interactive graphic about insurance turned out to be one of ProPublica’s most popular pieces of the year. I’m going to tell you about some things we learned in the process of designing and building it, from its bovine origin story to the challenges of visualizing an eyeball.

Lots of everyday objects are designed to prevent errors—saving clumsy and forgetful humans from our own mistakes or protecting us from worst-case scenarios. Sometimes designers make it impossible for us to mess up, other times they build in a backup plan for when we inevitably do. But regardless, the solution is baked right into the design.

Typography is an aesthetic choice, but it’s also an interface element that can help keep drivers and astronauts safe—or put real people in danger.

Chances are, you probably think your mind works pretty well. But, in reality, our brains fool us all the time with blind spots and biases. So what can we do about it? Let’s examine how graphics, including charts, interactives and other visual tools, can help show us the shortcomings of our own minds.

GIFs and other looped images are mightier than journalists might imagine. Lena Groeger explains the legend, the myth, the GIF.

Lena Groeger on the magical powers of every little thing.

Lena Groeger’s lowdown on how to apply classic design principles to your newfangled interactive graphics and apps.

Last week, ProPublica released an explainer on fires, chemical spills, explosions, and other incidents related to US oil and gas pipelines, along with an interactive map and a series of charts and tables. Reporter-designer-developer Lena Groeger explains how the project came about, what challenges she encountered, and how she assembled the final presentation.