We partnered with Strava to transform their most ambitious global research effort into an interactive data story that uncovers the motivations that get people moving — from mental health and social connection to goal-setting and pure joy.

They had just fielded their largest-ever survey of runners, with more than 25,000 responses from across nine countries. With this unprecedented dataset in hand, Strava engaged Imprint Projects and Polygraph to help develop a campaign around the findings. We were brought in as the lead design and development partner — responsible for analyzing the raw data, developing key themes and archetypes, and building an immersive digital storytelling experience to share the insights with the world.

The responses were as diverse as the runners themselves. To find patterns within the chaos, we worked with the Strava team, Imprint, and Polygraph on a multi-step process.

Qualitative Interviews

Imprint organized a series of three-hour, one-on-one interviews with 24 runners. The respondents were men and women from either the United States or United Kingdom.

Quantitative Survey

Strava administered an online survey to 25,000 of its users, who were invited via email and the Strava app. Respondents were drawn from nine markets -- Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, and the U.S.

The survey consisted of over 50 open-ended and multiple choice questions about the drivers of running motivation. The data derived from the survey would serve as the basis for most of the interactive data viz on the microsite.

In-Person Workshop

In October 2019, members of the Strava, Imprint, and DataFace teams met to review the research findings and brainstorm about the narrative. The qualitative research had already identified five core needs for runners -- stability, self-awareness, control, belonging and realization.

In a series of discussions and group activities, the teams identified additional patterns from the quantitative and qualitative data that fit within this framework.

Running is inherently emotional, and the story needed to mirror that. Our goal was to design a scrollable narrative that would invite runners to see themselves in the data, not feel boxed in by it. That meant clean visual metaphors, bold storytelling moments, and archetypes that felt inclusive rather than rigid.

We also wanted to give Strava’s global audience something they could explore on their own terms — a piece of digital storytelling that felt both editorial and interactive.

We performed our own analysis in Tableau, summarizing the results from each question and cross-tabulating multiple questions to unearth patterns in the responses. We also had demographic information about each runner, including age, gender, and country of origin, so we looked to see how responses varied across demographic groups.

Concepting

Once we examined the survey data in detail, we turned our attention to outlining the interactive experience at a high-level. We offered two, alternative “visions” for the experience to Strava and Imprint: one was a more traditional data story and the other a “choose your own adventure” style experience.

Strava gravitated towards the traditional data story, especially because the nature of our data was similar to that of the OpenNews project. Still, Strava emphasized a desire to have multiple “tracks” through the project, allowing the reader to delve deeply into insights that interested them and skip over others.

Mockups

We did four rounds of mockups with Strava, each higher fidelity than the last. We used Strava’s fonts, color palette, and iconography, so that the project could live naturally on Strava’s website.

We collaborated closely with Brinson McGowan, a Senior Designer on Strava’s team, during this phase of the project.

Story Flow

One of our biggest challenges was to sift through all the research -- hours upon hours of transcripted interviews, results from 50+ survey questions -- and identify the most salient points.

We decided to start the narrative by highlighting a juxtaposition. Most survey takers (63%) claimed that they “definitely enjoyed” running. But when asked about specific stages of a run — the first mile, the midpoint, running uphill — few people reported that they actually loved any of them. So if runners merely tolerate the physical act of running, why do they keep coming back to it?

It was a perfect “hook” to set up the rest of the experience. We honed in on two questions from the survey that spoke very directly to that question and to the impetus of the research.

We used data from questions #15 and #16 to design what we dubbed the “core visualization”

Content

We divided the rest of the experience into four “chapters”, based on themes identified through the research. Each chapter covered a deep-seated desire that running helps fulfill -- improving health, finding community, establishing routine.

The final chapter focused on the aspirational piece of running and its role in guiding people towards self-actualization. Instead of reporting out more stats from the survey, we decided that the most powerful way to present this information was by letting runners speak for themselves. So we sifted through hundreds of open-ended responses from the survey and added audio clips from in-person interviews. The result was something honest and raw.

The response was immediate. Hundreds of athletes began sharing the microsite on Twitter, with screenshots of the charts or findings that particularly resonated.

Tier 1 outlets like Reuters, The New York Times, Runners World, Vice, and Bustle wrote about the research, along with major media in Japan, Spain, and France. Overall, Strava landed 150+ press pieces.

Strava continued to drip out static images from the project on its official Instagram and Twitter accounts over the coming weeks. Together, the posts amassed almost 30,000 likes on Instagram alone.