Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
For example, the
World Progress Report
, shown in Figure 6-2, represents the
state of the world based on data from the United Nations Statistics Division.
At the time, the United Nations had released a lot of data, but reports were
mostly composed of reference tables. The goal of this project was to make
the data accessible to a wider audience, and it got a lot of attention, but
you can see that all of the charts are traditional ones. The content made the
graphics interesting.
From the other side of the fence, you might often see comments such as, “This
took me more than 5 minutes to understand. Fail.”
Some assume that insight from every data graphic should be instant, and in
many cases, this is a perfectly valid. A dashboard that updates in real time,
used to quickly see the status of a system, requires instant readability. On
the other hand, a tool designed to explore connections between millions
of people can be complex and require time to understand. You might show
simple views and aggregates, but you might also miss details that could lead
to better understanding of the data.
Sometimes there's just a lot of data to show, and it takes a while to go through
all of it. For example, the
Better Life Index
shown in Figure 6-3, created by the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Moritz
Stefaner, and creative consultancy Raureif, provides a way to explore the
quality of life in OECD countries.
Each flower represents a country, and each has eleven petals, which represent
topics that the OECD collects data on, such as housing conditions and spending
and household income. An index is created based on these factors, and the
higher a country is positioned on the vertical axis, the better the estimated
well-being in that country.
Note:
The OECD promotes policies to help
improve economic and social well-being and
compiles data for participating countries to esti-
mate progress. There are currently 34 member
countries.
The challenge is to decide what makes the quality of life
in one country better than another. A better way of life
is defined differently based on who you ask. Some might
care little about how much money they can make but care
a lot about overall health. Others might switch that. The
interactive enables you to specify what's important to you,
and the countries adjust height based on your picks. So it's
your own better life index.
Although Figure 6-3 weights all topics equally, Figure 6-4 takes an extreme
and places work-life balance as the most important topic and doesn't consider
anything else. Some countries move up and others move way down.
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