The Great British Class Calculator

By panja / 12/06/2013 / Graphics, Interaction, Projects / No Comments

	– with Applied Works – Award-winning, interactive Class Calculator following the largest ever study of British social class. The Great British Class Survey was a collaboration between BBC Lab UK and prominent sociologists from leading universities. In an attempt to remodel traditional definitions of social class they gathered and processed the responses of over 161,000 people. Whilst the sociologists were still processing their data we used their initial findings and hypotheses to build a prototype to demonstrate how the information could be presented in an entertaining and personalised way. BBC News Online then asked us to develop a fully functioning calculator after the statistical analysis was complete and seven new social class groupings had been defined. Users were asked to indicate their economic wealth, their social connections and cultural interests and then placed in the new class model on a ‘nearest match’ basis. Featured on the BBC’s homepage, our Class Calculator achieved six million views in 24 hours, was the site’s second most viewed page of the year, and the most shared ever. With around 25% of traffic coming from social media, a third were mobile views. In June 2013 the Class Calculator won a data journalism award. Looking at the initial findings from the sociologists Looking at initial archetypes Mapping the capital landscape based online questionare and looking at groupings Initial sketches looking at navigation and content components Looking at ways to compare across the other archetypes. Translating the initial sketches into basic wireframes Looking at visual representation of data Looking at the visual representation of the data viz Initial page designs looking at how to integrate contextual information Archetype comparison dataviz Initial archetype illustrations Looking at how to make the initial questions playful and engaging Page design for first prototype First digital prototype BBC Class Calculator first digital prototype Final archetypes New illustrations for final archetypes BBC Class Calculator from Applied Works on Vimeo. At launch the Class Calculator achieved 6 Million page views in 24 hours, a third of which via mobile The results from BBC Lab UK’s Great British Class Survey reveal a brand new class system of seven groups. Try The Great British class calculator: What class are you? to see where you fit in: Tags: BBC, dataviz, interaction

– with Applied Works –

Award-winning, interactive Class Calculator following the largest ever study of British social class.

The Great British Class Survey was a collaboration between BBC Lab UK and prominent sociologists from leading universities. In an attempt to remodel traditional definitions of social class they gathered and processed the responses of over 161,000 people.

Whilst the sociologists were still processing their data we used their initial findings and hypotheses to build a prototype to demonstrate how the information could be presented in an entertaining and personalised way.

BBC News Online then asked us to develop a fully functioning calculator after the statistical analysis was complete and seven new social class groupings had been defined. Users were asked to indicate their economic wealth, their social connections and cultural interests and then placed in the new class model on a ‘nearest match’ basis.

Featured on the BBC’s homepage, our Class Calculator achieved six million views in 24 hours, was the site’s second most viewed page of the year, and the most shared ever. With around 25% of traffic coming from social media, a third were mobile views. In June 2013 the Class Calculator won a data journalism award.