We know that sometimes it’s the little things that make or break your experience when you're trying to get something done, so we're happy to have implemented new UX enhancements based on your feedback:

We also updated the Georeference experience to allow special characters when uploading. This should make things a lot easier when you know mySidewalk already has the shape you need.

We now allow .svg images to be loaded anywhere images are allowed, providing more flexibility to the content you use to tell your data story.

The best part of our jobs is growing alongside you, so we're happy to say these updates are a result of feedback from our very own users. We're excited for more updates to come, but we're always listening over at

If you had a chance to participate in a trial of Seek this year--thank you! We were able to gather a lot of useful feedback during the temporary open access period and learn more about the challenges and needs people have when looking for data. It was fun while it lasted, but all good things must come to an end. As of Jan 3, 2022, we are ending the open trial (Seek lives on, of course) while we work on implementing things we learned into our roadmap forward. We also want to keep hearing feedback about how you use Seek, so please reach out to us at [email protected].

We know that our users love engaging with our mapping experience, but sometimes you want to see a region on a map without having to actually create one from scratch. That’s why we have integrated map selection into all of our geography selection experiences.

You can also select census tracts and census block groups from that map (something you can’t currently search for) which gives a truly personalized experience when you are going hyper-local.

We took some time in October to do what we call a Sprintermission. The goal here is two-fold.

Thanks for letting us take this time away from feature development so we can get some new things going that will make mySidewalk better than ever!

We know how important source information is when looking at data. Understanding where it came from, the circumstances under which it was collected, and details such as dates and places are important to get a clear picture of that data.
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Our library has a vast amount of information about the data we provide, including much that we have not been able to present to you in an accessible manner.
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In October, we made some changes behind the scenes that will allow us to start presenting that information to you in more places and in better formats. We're excited to begin implementing work from these efforts in the coming months!
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You already knew you could search Seek quickly and easily but now you can browse our Guides for pre-selected content to get you started. We have billions of data points that have been carefully curated to deliver accurate, local, and specific information to you without the traditional nonsense of downloading, cleaning and cross-checking.

Seek provides both search and browse options that help you get right to the data so you can spend more time with the data and less time wrangling it.

Keep an eye out for our Featured Guides as well. We are working hard on topics important to you and have already published Guides around ARPA, Affordable Housing, Digital Inclusion, and more!

This month we focused on improving the search and filtering options when you select data. We are aiming to improve both search and browse (see Guides above) as you continue to explore and use mySidewalk data.

Some enhancements:

We're doing something special and need your help to spread the word:

We’re offering everyone in your organization free access to Seek through the rest of 2021. When you share the unique link from your account with colleagues, they can sign up for a free account and gain immediate access to 7.5 billion data values on health, housing, the economy, mobility, and more.

Why are we doing this? One of our newer customers recently shared this feedback:

It made us wonder...what if everyone felt like this? What might be possible if everyone had easy access to the same reliable data to create a shared, holistic understanding of the places they’re impacting?

Let's find out together.

You know how you are always saying that more data is better? Well, mySidewalk just increased the amount of data available to you by 82%! We did this using a methodology called apportionment and it makes the data we already have available in more shapes and more custom boundaries. You won’t see a difference in how you use mySidewalk but you will notice how many more data values you can get!

You may have noticed that in Seek, you can add lots of geographies to visualize data but in components, you are restricted. We have raised that restriction so you can now add many geographies to your components when you are making them. Beware that if you add a LOT (think more than 25) you will experience a slow-down in performance.

Raising that geography limit allows us to do a few new things with tables! You can now create a table and a callout using the “create visualization” button directly from Seek. Just add geographies, click the button and follow the workflow to build your table or callout!

When you go to select a geographic region within mySidewalk, it’s handy to be able to visualize exactly what you are picking! Now, you can visualize your selections on a map and even pick directly from the map!

Anywhere you pick a geo, you can choose “Map View” to view or select from the map. Use the dropdown to select the geographic level (like zip code or county!). Keep in mind that you will only be able to visualize the level that you have selected in the dropdown even if you have others selected in your list.

Bonus: You can use the map to select Census tracts and block groups, which was not possible from the list view.
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Upon entering Seek, you will now see groupings of indicators on the Seek Home page. These indicators will allow you to choose a pre-selected group of data values right from the home page. Our experts use their deep knowledge of the data available alongside their industry knowledge to curate these groupings of popular and valuable data!

We updated our main menu to make it easier for you to access key features, with a quick start menu and direct access to Seek, Data, Reports/Dashboards, and Upload.

The pages should be familiar but with fewer clicks to get where you need to go. We have also organized the icons in a top-down approach to start with mySidewalk data (Seek), your own data (Data), upload new boundaries and data (Geography and Upload) and then create Reports (Publisher) with all the data you have discovered!

Once you georeference your data, you can start to leverage the power of your data PLUS mySidewalk data! A correlation or a bivariate map can be created to leverage census data for your specific community needs and values. We want to give you the power of the census to be built into great stories for your local arena.

Creating a boundary using travel times opens up a lot of possibilities within mySidewalk. You might want to know the service boundary around a fire station or hospital based on a 15 minute travel time. Or, you might like to understand the demographics within a 5 minute bike time from your proposed new office location.

No matter what you want to know, travel times can be a valuable way to make a boundary and we are making that easier than ever.

To complement the improvements in February, we continue to listen to feedback and improve Seek to make it fast and easy to use.

We've launched an exciting lineup of new features to enhance your experience, focusing on improvements to searching and downloading community data, uploading and visualizing your own data without GIS experience, and providing more accessible and flexible sharing tools for your publications.

Plus...

We've enjoyed hearing the response to Seek since we first launched the tool last year, and are particularly grateful to hear how much it's already helped so many of you access and use community data. To summarize just a few thoughts we heard:

But we also know we can keep making it better.
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Your input has been helpful in understanding how we can keep improving to break down barriers to using important community data regardless of prior knowledge. Here are the latest improvements we've made to enhance the Seek and Data Library experiences in mySidewalk:

We know visualizing the data you upload to mySidewalk is a top need for our users, and we've been working on enhancements that remove friction points in your way to unlocking insight. The georeferencing tool lets you upload data that doesn't already have spatial information, allowing you to match values to our pre-defined geographies. Simply upload, assign, and visualize.
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By assigning your data to mySidewalk's predefined geographies, you can:

mySidewalk prides itself on the ability to deliver data experiences that are accessible and useable by every person in a community. It's why we're committed to accessibility standards in our work, driving our philosophy to raise the standards of the data experience. Responsive design and compatibility with assistive tech like screen readers and text-to-braille software are built-in when you publish with mySidewalk, but how about the colors you use? Our own designers use tools to ensure we pick colors appropriately, but you shouldn't need to be an expert to create engaging, inclusive designs that don't leave people out.

We developed the new Accessibility Color Palette Generator to enable you with the control to lead data communications with true accessibility in all your work:

In addition to our highlights, we've made some requested improvements you may have noticed recently:

This year so far, we've updated data from the CDC, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Census, and Department of Housing to name a few. Recent updates include: