Anna Walant

The current state of sex education within the United States is abysmal.

Having been a high school educator, I witnessed first-hand the affect that the lack of comprehensive sex education had on my students. Combined with my own lived experiences and observations of my peers, I knew that there exists a systemic issue with the way sex education is taught in the United States.

To complete my masters of interaction design at Northeastern University, where I concentrated in usability and development, I wanted to focus on programming my own exploration of sex ed in the U.S.

I conducted a lot of research in order to effectively create this project. 

In addition to scholarly articles and books specifically on the matter, I also found non-biased resources for factual information regarding the state laws around sexual education. I then interviewed educators, high school students, social workers, sexual health experts, and young adults (old enough to know how their education or lack-thereof affected them, but young enough to remember what they were taught and when) to better understand the effects of these laws.

WHAT I LEARNED

Of the public education in the 50 states, only:

• 37 states require information on abstinence
• 33 states require information on HIV
• 26 states require information that is age appropriate
• 18 states require information on contraceptives
• 13 states require information that is medically accurate
• 8 states approach it without a race/ethnicity or gender bias
• 8 states allow it to be inclusive of sexual orientation
• 2 states mandate it must not promote religion
• Additionally, 87% of schools nationwide allow students to be exempt from sexual education courses

Meanwhile, regarding sexual assault:

• Only 16% of students report having any form of sexual assault education from their school or parents
• Roughly 18% of women in the US report being victims of sexual assault
• 80% experience it before 25 years old
• Sexual assault is viewed as an “epidemic”on college campuses, and yet only roughly 5% of cases are actually reported

I chose to use D3.JS because I felt it would give me the most control over the way my data would be presented. 

I already had an introduction to D3 from a previous project, and I was already familiar with JavaScript and CSS from a few courses I took in grad school. I saw this project as a way to honor the knowledge I had learned.

Overall, I divided each part of the project into goals, and each goal into bite-sized pieces. Something I’ve learned about myself is when tackling a programming problem, I need to start small so as not to overwhelm myself — but also because it makes it easier to debug!

For the design of my project, I wanted it to look inviting. Sex education is a topic that can easily turn audiences off (pun intended). By making the color palette soft, I hoped that it would invite more intrigue and exploration.

As an experience, I wanted this to be an interactive resource, something that audiences could browse and explore at will. I wanted everyone to find something in this that spoke to them, whether it be the importance of consent, sex and gender exploration, or the role of religion in the classroom.

I broke the narrative into three interactive chunks:

• The current laws on sex education illustrated on a map
• In their own words, the lasting impact on children
• How this affects concepts like consent and sexual harassment

After testing, debugging, and more debugging, I had an end site that I was proud of. 

Below is a video of the project in its final form, but you can explore it yourself via this link. Please note that it works best at full screen on a desktop/laptop in Chrome.