Designing data stories for the six inch screen

In India, digital journalism is consumed primarily on mobile devices. Yet many visual stories are still conceived on large desktop screens and later adapted for smaller ones. This workshop argues that mobile-first data storytelling is not about breakpoints or layout tweaks. It is about narrative compression, interaction simplification, and designing within a cognitive load budget.

The workshop is structured as a hands-on redesign lab that deliberately moves away from code. Participants will rework a desktop-oriented data story for a six-inch screen using pen and paper. By removing software from the process, the focus shifts to thinking, not just ever-changing tools.

We begin with a short diagnostic exercise. Participants open a desktop data story on their phones and identify what breaks, what becomes unreadable, what requires hover and what feels overwhelming. This surfaces common desktop assumptions that fail in a mobile first environment.

Next, participants will be given a simple rectangular sheet representing a mobile screen. They mark the thumb zone, the first scroll boundary, and the area of highest visual attention. They then receive a dataset and a desktop chart and must redesign it with some constraints like: Maximum three visual elements, one interaction, thirty seconds to first insight. It must work with one thumb, remain legible in bright outdoor light.

During the workshop, all redesigns will be sketched on paper.

We will then examine interaction cost and narrative compression. When should hover be replaced with annotation, when should comparison be stacked rather than filtered, when should scrollytelling be avoided altogether. Participants critique each other’s sketches using a structured checklist.

The final segment focuses on accessibility and performance from a design perspective. We discuss tap target sizing, font scaling, contrast under sunlight, scroll depth density, and low bandwidth considerations. Participants refine their paper prototypes accordingly.

Each participant leaves with a mobile data story checklist that can be applied in their design workflow. This includes criteria such as whether the main insight appears before the first scroll, whether the story survives as a screenshot and whether interaction is truly necessary.

I build investigative data stories for audiences who read on phones, not desktops. Each project forces a trade-off between what we want to show and what a six-inch screen can realistically carry. This workshop situates that tension within larger debates in data visualization around usability, accessibility, performance, and responsible interaction.

It is designed for data journalists, visual designers, product teams, and editors who want to create mobile-first stories that hold up under real-world conditions; limited attention, variable bandwidth, bright light, one-handed use.

Participants will gain a repeatable design framework, a constraint-based thinking approach and practical tools for effective mobile-first data visualization without reducing impact.