Designing Data Stories for Small Screens

Most of your audience reads on a phone, not a big monitor. This workshop focuses on redesigning desktop data stories for a six-inch screen using paper prototypes and clear mobile-first constraints. You will work with concepts like thumb zones, the first scroll, interaction cost and cognitive load to understand what actually works on small screens and why.

It is designed for data journalists, visual designers, product teams and editors who want their stories to hold their audiences attention on mobile. You will leave with a practical mobile data story checklist, a way to spot what breaks on smaller screens and a set of paper sketches you can take back to your team. The workshop is conducted by Areena Arora, an editorial coder at The Hindu who builds investigative data stories for phone-first audiences.

Areena Arora is a journalist who transforms messy data into stories that matter. She uncovers patterns hidden in datasets, then designs how people encounter and understand those stories.

Her work sits at the intersection of rigorous reporting and intentional design. She asks: What is the data trying to tell us? How do we present it such that people actually listen and grasp its intricacies? Before finding her way to this unique blend as The Hindu’s first-ever Editorial Coder, she reported on public education and local governance in Tennessee, U.S.

She's obsessed with making complexity accessible. When she's not chasing stories in data, she's cooking up a storm, always up for feeding an army.