Official Corona Dashboard of the Netherlands by CLEVER°FRANKE

Since the outbreak of the corona pandemic, sharing reliable information has become one of the most important functions of governments. The Dutch government found it essential to have a single knowledge source that gives a clear view of the status of the pandemic in the Netherlands.

Due to the nature of the crisis, this was a time-sensitive project. The first version of the website needed to be completed with a short turnaround time and compliant with the Dutch government’s accessibility guidelines.

The initial goal of the dashboard’s first version was to quickly make the crisis situation visible. Over time, based on the user tests, we decided to move beyond this goal and provide more insights and interpretations, and increase the accessibility. The overall look of the dashboard is simple with a clear focus on the content.

In order to make the dashboard relevant for citizens and the media, we created the ‘Latest Developments’ page on the landing page. With this, we show the most relevant metrics and indicators right away in the context of the most recent situation in society.

The dashboard provides different layers of information in a digestible manner. Users can easily see the situation of the entire country, zoom in on the safety regions and zoom in once more on the local municipalities that they are interested in. The amount of detail the user wants or needs to receive is provided in an easy-to-use structure without overwhelming the user.

Providing more context to data is one of the most important principles we followed. To avoid presenting number-heavy graphs, we added tooltips that function as text label that appears when the user hovers over the graphs and maps. Instead of merely presenting numbers, users can also see the date or time range that the data is based on. The dashboard also combines data with more editorial content (e.g.articles) to give more insights into the situation.

Taking into account the accessibility guidelines from the government, we constantly optimize the dashboard for a variety of target audiences. For instance, we used high contrast on maps to make them readable for color-blind people. We also incorporated a ‘skip link’, which is an internal link on the homepage that permits users to skip navigational materials and quickly access the website’s main content.

Corona dashboard brings a new way of communication between the government and the public. Instead of waiting for people to ask questions or directing them to different pages, it immediately shows the full picture and continuously reports updates.

With its meticulous attention to accessibility and comprehensiveness, the corona dashboard of the Netherlands is exemplary in using data and design to democratize information. It shows the power of data in making a crisis situation more visible and understandable. As data is updated at a very fast pace, the dashboard speeded up the decision-making process considerably and has been enabling the government to take actionable solutions.

Video - https://player.vimeo.com/external/517165189.hd.mp4?s=72a06be044b366ce1d1f3d5755cd0d9a5043d130&profile_id=175