Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure
.
, a screenshot from the NCI Web site, shows LM plots with state names,
lung and bronchus cancer mortality rates, current smoking rates, and micromaps.
his figure illustrates some design changes (e.g., variable selection on the let and
maps on the right) that are specific to the NCI micromap implementation. he ma-
jordesignchallenge forthisWebsitearosefromtaking LMplotsfromaportraitprint
image to a landscape screen image. he change in orientation significantly affected
the number of rows that could be displayed. he requirement for a standard ban-
ner and logos for branding exacerbated the problem by further reducing the vertical
screen real estate. Since only a few panels could simultaneously appear in view, the
revised design provides scrolling within the Java applet that keeps the variable scales
and other context information in view. In the current design, there is noscrollbar for
the browserwindow if the screen area setting is for
pixelsor more.Usabil-
ity studies identified many health care planners using a
pixel resolution.
A notice now suggests increasing the screen resolution to avoid this problem.
he main features of the NCI micromap Web site are as follows. he scrollbar
to the right of the micromaps in Fig.
.
controls a small set of statistical and geo-
graphical panels, leaving the reference information above and below the statistical
and micromap displays in place. he default for the user controllable placement of
micromaps puts them by the scrollbar in the right for easy scanning of contours re-
vealed by the cumulative micromaps. Clicking a triangle above one of the columns
specifies the sort order that determines how the regions accumulate. he panels of-
ten show Healthy People
US target intervals (the green region), estimates, and
confidence intervals.
Movingthemouseoveranestimateshowstheunderlyingnumericalvalues.More-
over, moving the mouse over any of the linked items (region name, graph glyphs,
and map region) causes these items to blink. Clicking on a state name invokes a drill-
down to show the counties of the selected state.
Due to the interest in region rankings, the statistical panels have been augmented
with numbers indicating the rank order.heinterpretation of “
” is explicitly labeled
since usability assessment found people who interpret “
” as best.
he color selection options for this Web site include one color scheme suitable for
the two most common kinds of color vision deficiencies. here are additional items
including popup overviews that augment the LM plots.
Micromaps at Utah State University
1.4.4
Micromaps and other graphical displays were found to be very useful for the display
and analysis of the geographic spread of the West Nile Virus (WNV) and other dis-
eases (Symanzik et al.,
) across the US. For this reason, researchers at Utah State
University (USU) obtained the NCI Java micromap code and adapted it for the dis-
play of WNV data (Chapala,
). Similar to the NCI micromap application, a user
can now select among WNV infection rates and counts, and death rates and counts,
starting with the WNV data for the US for the
season. A drill-down into US
counties is possible given that data at the county level are available. New features
of the USU Web site include the plotting of the data for
years side by side in one
