Mia Shu
Presentation5.jpg

United States of Emission

Data visualisation

 

United States of Emissions

Interactive data visualisation design

Group project with Linnea Michel and Afina Zahra
MSc Design in Linköping University, 2018

 
 

Scope

Data visualizations can be a useful tool for exploring and communicating complicated information, but they can also distort or misrepresent data.  How can we design better data visualisations to help people understand more easily?

Our project is to design an interactive visualisation concept with United States’ data sets, including GHG (Greenhouse gas) emissions per capita, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita, and the population of a state. This cartogram shows the relationship between these three variables.

MY ROLE:

Graphic Design, Data cleaning and analysis

Timeline:

4 weeks

Tools

Excel, Tableau, Adobe Illustrator

 
Presentation12_v15.png
 

1. Our Process

The following depicts our process for our project:

  1. Research, defining project scope, and data cleaning

  2. Exploration of data sets through sketching, Tableau, R, and online tools (i.e. Tilegrams)

  3. Ideate on the representations of selected variables and interactivity of data sets

  4. Finalize designs

Presentation_31October_hr23.jpg
 
 

2. Key design decisions

We explored different types of cartogram, and ultimately decided on the Tilegrams as it provides clarity and easier comparison across different states.

Presentation_31October_hr15.jpg

One of the key challenges for this data visualization was how to ensure readability and clarity for three different variables.

We explored various geometric shapes, structures and overlays.

Presentation_31October_hr16.jpg
 
Presentation_31October_hr18.jpg
 
Presentation_31October_hr17.jpg
 
 

Classifying data was also an important step as it affects how the data is visually presented. We explored various methods like intervals of constant size, quantiles method and Fisher-Jenks algorithm.

We ultimately selected the ‘Quantiles method’.

Presentation_31October_hr21.jpg
 
 

3. Outcome

Feature 1

The user can hover over the tile and it will display information in relation to the state.

The data can be sorted by a specific category, the example here on the right shows the states with the lowest percentile of emission.

Presentation12_v16.png
Presentation12_v17.png
 
 

Feature 2

A scatter plot diagram is designed for users to further explore the data set. Here, the users can identify the trends, the relationship between the variables and any outliers. The user can again click on the data and obtain information relating to the state.

Presentation12_v18.png
Presentation10.png
 
 

Feature 3

A state comparison function is designed to allow comparison between two states and shows the breakdown of emissions by sectors.

Presentation12_v111.png