Caregiving in the US Digital Report
Every five years, the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP partner to conduct research that paints a clear picture of the state of family caregiving in the US. Today, 63 million adults are providing care to adults and children with medical conditions or disabilities. And of the 6,800 participants in this study, all are unpaid family caregivers. The report examines the physical, mental, emotional, social, and financial costs of unpaid caregiving, and illustrates the shifts in trends over time.
Read the print report here. The digital report will be launched in November of 2025.
Challenge
Static reports—whether they’re printed or downloaded as a PDF—come with limitations. The two greatest challenges for NAC and AARP were (1) readers couldn’t compare data sets to find deeper insights to support their work without processing the data themselves, and (2) the report itself was limited in how it could grow. As future data collection provided new data points and granular insights, the report needed to handle this seamlessly.
As the Director of Strategy & User Experience, I led the client through the process of developing a vision, defining requirements, and designing the experience for an interactive digital report that will scale over time.
Changing the narratives about caregiving
Caregiving is an inherently emotional experience, and emotion has a powerful impact on how we receive and remember messages. Since we knew research would comprise the majority of the report’s content, we sought to weave caregiving stories throughout the data to create a deeper, more resonant experience for readers.
One of the primary goals for the report is narrative change. Caregiving is often seen and presented in the media as an obligation, yet many people find an immense sense of purpose as a caregiver. Over time, these caregiver stories can reshape public understanding by highlighting the profound meaning, growth, connection, and challenges that caregiving relationships offer.
Information Architecture & User Experience
We developed the information architecture to prioritize content discovery while balancing the need for users to navigate to different sections of the report the way they might move through a printed report. The sitemap was structured to guide readers through a logical progression from research findings to personal narratives, ensuring that data and stories reinforced each other.
Our UX design approach focused on creating intuitive navigation pathways that would accommodate different reading preferences—whether users wanted to dive deep into specific research sections or explore caregiver stories. We used visual hierarchy and content chunking strategies to make dense research material more digestible, informing readers with credible data and engaging them emotionally through authentic caregiver voices.
Designed to engage readers
The visual design team was able to work directly from our strategy and UX framework, with clear parameters emphasizing accessibility, emotional resonance, and content hierarchy. The design system needed to create seamless transitions between data visualization and personal narratives, and typography choices made the research-heavy report easy to navigate and read across devices.
“The 2025 report tells a stunning story: 63 million Americans—1 in 4 adults—are providing ongoing care for older adults, people with serious illnesses, or those with disabilities. That’s a jaw-dropping 20 million increase since 2015, revealing a caregiving crisis that’s been hiding in plain sight.”
My Role:
- Developed the plan for the report’s digital strategy, user experience, and narrative development and oversaw its implementation across the different project phases.
- Conducted interviews, workshops, and desk research to learn more about the organization’s audiences, positioning, and goals for the digital report.
- Served as the liaison between the design team and the technical team, helping develop prototypes of major interactions, data visualizations, and templates for organizing data for the CMS.
- Led the development of the information architecture and user experience design for the new digital report.
Other Contributors:
- The agency’s design team created a logo and designs for the new web-based report.
- The agency’s engineering team developed the website and robust interactive data visualizations.
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