Country Evaluation Report Design – Before & After

Client Brief

For this project, the client wanted to create a more streamlined and visual representation of the evaluation data for their non-profit report. The data is broken down by country for 10 different countries. Report needs to be easy to scan and interesting for stakeholders to read. Development would like to use the evaluation reports to solicit donations from major donors. In order to do so, the data needs to tell brief and a story of the organization’s work. Client would also like to be able to update this on their own each year.

Problems to Solve

Here are Tanzania’s country report pages “before” the redesign.

1. Need to make a template that is easy for the client to edit. Right now it’s in Microsoft Word and is challenging to edit — especially if they would like to add more graphics/photos. Creating the design in Adobe Indesign or Photoshop will not allow the client to update on their own.
2. It’s difficult to tell what country data you were reading because the program name rather than the country is prominent on the page.
3. Too much data. Decide on the purpose of the report – is it to report all evaluation data? Compare each country to the next? To better understand the strengths and needs of each country? Need to to find a way to combine and reduce the amount of text and simplify the report.
4. The data reported is not consistent from country to country. Discuss with client what data is most important in order to remove the noise and create consistency.
5. No personality to the report. The reports are all numbers and lacked any personality from country to country. Report contains little to no photos to evoke an emotional response from the reader. Without this, it will be difficult for Development to solicit donations using these reports.
6. No reference point – there appears to be no “overall” report that shows the combined data. Therefore, there’s no context when reading the individual country reports as to what’s different, or what stands out.

Solutions

Here are the final two pages for Tanzania’s country report, after the redesign.

1. Moved the report from Microsoft Word to Canva.com, where the client has a nonprofit “Team” account. Report turned into a template that they can update in coming years and the information.
2. Created a new header design so that the country name is the most prominent item on the page and it’s apparent what data you are looking at
3. Reduced size from 81 pages to 22 pages. Determined the key areas of interest for stakeholders and potential donors. The template will ensure the information for parallel; from year to year and from country to country.
4. Every country will have the same data on the first page. The second page will have a suggested format but will also allow for flexibility to highlight anything unique to that particular country.
5. Add more visual representations of data – graphics, pie charts and beautiful photos to add personality to each country. Having a flexible second page will also allow the nonprofit to show-off any unique highlights for each country. This will add more personality without creating data inconsistencies.
6. Create an “overview” section in the beginning of the report so the reader has context for each country. This section will use the same template as each country but will display the combined data for all countries.