When we launched Pulse in 2020, we received many requests for ‘country reports,’ so we built them, not knowing yet what they would be used for or by whom. We know some of our community members were using them for advocacy, but it took a lot of specific technical knowledge to understand what the pages showed.
We realized that if we took a more holistic, user-centered perspective, these reports could become powerful, data-driven storytelling tools for exploring Internet growth, development, and resilience at the country or territory level.
Today, we’re releasing a new version of the Pulse Country Reports. Some of the improvements and updates included are:
- An improved landing page: no more tabs, accurate flag shapes, and streamlined copy.
- Plain-language highlights at the top of every page, fed with live data from the page, so they’re always up to date—ready for reports, presentations, or advocacy arguments.
- New data types, such as Internet usage by gender and location, broadband penetration, affordability, and average download speeds, to show a more nuanced picture of access.
- More historical data, such as Internet penetration, ASN counts, and average Internet cost.
- A new section in the sidebar contains country information, such as population and economic classification, for easier comparison.
- Better interlinking with the rest of Pulse, such as using a Netloss calculation in the sidebar, IXP development, locally cached content (formerly “popular content locality”), and pulling some of the key measurements from the Internet Resilience Index (IRI) into the page.
- Improvements in terminology and content will ensure that our language includes a wider range of audiences and is focused on the right amount of information for the right user at the right time.
- More comprehensible visualizations. We’ll add more types of visualizations as we continue developing the page.
See our release note for full details.
Below is an example of the type of story we know can be told with the new country reports.
Internet Development in the DRC
What’s Next for Pulse?
We’ll continue to iterate and add to this feature, and we’re committed to co-designing Pulse with our community. For example, we wanted to add measurement data for global energy usage to connect energy resilience with Internet resilience. Still, we haven’t found an open source that covers enough countries to consider using it.
If you have ideas, requests, or feedback on the new country reports, our Internet Shutdowns feature (the next major redesign we’re tackling), or any other aspects of Pulse, please email us at [email protected] or add it to our feedback form.
Thanks, Jane Ruffino, for all her help in this project.