How do you communicate the positive impact United Way has on people’s lives? We created an interactive map and platform where success stories can be shared, discovered and explored worldwide.

McCann invited us to design and build an interactive map and story sharing platform for United Way based on the Google Maps API. The objective was to provide a home for people to add, find, and explore success stories written by people who have been helped by United Way.

We began with refining the concept through UX and UI explorations, and creating prototypes to show how the user journey could be impacted and improved upon through dynamic map searches and story discovery, simultaneously.

To provide for a scalable platform we categorized stories using United Way’s three key building blocks for a good life: education, income, and health. Applying this filter element and pairing it with a geolocation search feature allows users easily find, navigate and explore locations and stories as the map becomes more and more populated with details.

To help promote the platform, we created a mnemonic which accompanies a United Way commercial featuring football quarterback, Russell Wilson.

United Way’s Story Map is continuing to evolve, covering regions from Alaska to Puerto Rico and everything in between. United Way will continue to expand stories and features globally through planned updates to maps, stories, videos and other additions to enhance and evolve content and the user experience.

We are proud to collaborate with and serve this important non-profit organization in their mission to help people discover the value United Way provides for the communities they serve.