The COVID-19 pandemic caused economic volatility globally. This was alleviated in Australia via JobKeeper payments from the federal government that sustained employees that could not work during the first wave of the pandemic.

The end of these payments caused uncertainty and a potential of hardship for businesses. As designer on the ABC news business team I worked with @stephaniechalmers and @michaeljanda to communicate the extent of JobKeeper payments through a 3D heat-map used both online and for broadcast.

The process of translating complex postcode data from the ABS into a map was completed utilising Blender 3D and Chartbeat. An internal online kit was used to make an animated video play to a particular frame when the user scrolls.

#jobkeeper 3D heat map. Playthrough activated by scroll: https://t.co/jgNOuNmw63 @abcnews pic.twitter.com/emmnWNpTgn

— Alistair Kroie (@AlistairKroie) March 24, 2021

The article received over 250,000 unique visitors and 39,000 for the video on YouTube. See the full article here:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-17/jobkeeper-end-will-hit-these-postcodes-hardest/13242400?nw=0

See the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_G79PqB6sk