The New Normal by Alberto Cairo, Axios, Google News Initiative, Schema Design

Globally, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed lifestyles, personal habits, and created a deep chasm between “before” and “after.” We were interested in exploring how the pandemic affected people’s shopping behavior. Schema, along with Axios and Alberto Cairo, worked with the Google News Initiative to create The New Normal: an interactive data visualization of search intent around commonly purchased products and the search patterns evident pre-pandemic through the end of 2021. Using keywords pulled from Google’s product taxonomy, this project divides the data into three categories: “Normal” (trends that remained unaffected by the pandemic), “Unusual” (trends that spiked or showed unusual behavior), and “New Normal” (unusual trends that persisted into 2021).