The Afghanistan Papers

The project started when the Post won a FOIA lawsuit against the federal government to gain access to hundreds of documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

I lead design and development of a database page that made these many thousands of pages of information accessible (and intelligible) to readers.

The design goal was twofold. First, allow general interest readers to navigate and understand the impact of these documents without feeling overwhelmed or lost without context. Second, to let expert users (those familiar with the military and government) easily hone in on specific information or documents.

I took a page from product design practices and created user personas and journeys to guide the UX/UI design of the page: an expert from the state department, navigating to highly specific information, and a student researcher, learning about these documents for the first time.

Built with React, this project required development of a fully custom PDF viewer, which enabled reporters to link to specific documents and pages throughout the series of stories, as well as add custom annotations.