2018 Data Storytelling Studio @ MIT

Lifeline is an installation created by Domestic Data Streamers. This design firm uses data storytelling to communicate complex information and generate knowledge.

This data piece is made up of a grid of 800 balloons which mark the point between one’s real age and the age at which they would like to die, contrasting the information with their gender. The coordinates where no one wants to die are represented in white, whereas the ones that represent death are in black.

I think this project is exploratory and it does effectively communicate their intentions. I believe the communication goal is to make people aware that humans don’t choose until what age they want to live, but they can choose what age they want to die. I really like how they use physical objects (balloons) to visualize life/death (white/black), age (coordinates of the balloon). It is showing the spatial variables and the colors to convey information.

This way of representation also generates conversation right in the space. People in this installation can discuss and think what their goals in life are, and also generate new emotions.

 

Chip manufacturers claim that air is added into chip packets to protect the chips during transit and lengthen shelf life. However, this visualization created by a UK appliance company called ADC provides a different perspective on chip packaging. Targeted at chip lovers, it looks into the amount of air in chip packets produced by major brands and investigates whether or not the manufacturers’ claims are true. It concludes that chip packet with more air has longer shelf life but not better protection during transit, and suggests a range for ideal air percentage in a chip packet.

Overall, I think this is an effective visualization because it tells a complete story, from introducing the topic, providing evidence, and coming to a conclusion. On more specific aspects, the representation of the percentage of air in each brand of chips by a picture of the insides of the chip packet makes the data easy to understand. In addition, the graphics below the description of the drop test explains how the experiment was done in a concise manner. Aside from that, emphasizing parts of text by a bold font helps readers grasp the main ideas.

However, some aspects were not effective. In the testing part, there is no explanation for why the drop test was chosen for testing protection during transit and how it was determined that the reason for longer shelf life was more air rather than other factors, which makes the data less credible. Furthermore, the bar graph displaying the percentage of air in various chip packets produced by each brand contributes nothing new to the finding that air percentage varies a lot between different kinds of chips. This graph repeats evidence provided by the previous piece of information.

Visualization: https://www.cda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/crisps-main-infographic.png

As opioid abuse has risen across the United States in the past few years, the epidemic has been covered and humanized in a number of ways, from deep personal narratives to more character-driven reviews of innovative solutions.  One data visualization from the Washington Post from October 2017 takes a different approach for its readers, by comparing different opioids that are currently being abused with one that is more commonly-prescribed: morphine.

One-by-one, the article ties information on the uses, historical prescription patterns, and role in the current wave of abuse for drugs such as oxycodone, methadone, heroin, and fentanyl with simple graphics to compare their strength to that of morphine. In doing so, the article attempts to visually reinforce the gravity of each drug’s potency, both on drug users and the state of the crisis.

This goal is most clearly illustrated in the final drug profiled by the article, carfentanil. The article breaks its established physical structure of visual-followed-by-text, and embeds two striking stories of carfentanil’s use as an elephant tranquilizer and bio-weapon over the visualizations 10,000 pink squares (to represent that it is 10,000 times stronger than morphine).

While the visualizations effectively conveys its point using striking colors and a simple symbology, it misses its mark by assuming its readers have some understanding (and perhaps experience) with the strength of morphine. In fact, at no point in the article is ‘strength’ precisely defined, although it is mentioned that this unit of comparison is borrowed from medicine and law enforcement. However, for those without a clear baseline of the pain-mitigating and euphoric effects of morphine, it is difficult to fully understand the scale of comparison.

Source: “See how deadly street opioids like ‘elephant tranquilizer’ have become,” by Dan Keating and Samuel Granados, Washington Post, October 25, 2017. 

“How reporters around the world risk their lives for the truth”

As the Internet speeds up the spread of information, the world becomes more transparent. However, the journalists, who share the information with us, shoulder more of the danger.

Created by Luke Shuman, the visualization shows the number of journalists killed in 10 countries between 2000 and 2015. The goal is to draw the attention of media workers as well as the government. The authors want the reader to notice the dangerous situation of journalists and protect those journalists. Their target audience appears to be media workers and the government.

The authors use a world map as a base panel to show the number of casualties and add four more analysis based on the other data source. At the bottom of the picture, the authors examine the relationship between casualties and the media type, between casualties and press freedom index, between casualties and reporters’ employment status. Most important, the authors point out that the impunity rate is extremely high. Interestingly, there is a special sentence lies on the bottom, saying that “Data courtesy of Freedom House and the Community to Protect Journalists”. Apparently, the authors want the United Nations to help solve the crisis.

This is an effective visualization because it presents the “dead journalists” topic to the target audience and would successfully draw their attention. The important data is marked by red color, which stands out with the black base map. Furthermore, the high impunity rate stands out at the bottom and conveys the most important message to the audience: the global community must protect those who perform this vital service.

Although the visualization conveys the important message as the authors expect, some analysis seems unreasonable. For example, the conclusion that more news online means more dead internet journalists seems unreliable. As the internet grows fast, the number of internet journalists dramatically increases, which is obvious. We need to compare the ratio of death internet journalists and the ratio of print journalists to make a conclusion.

Source: https://www.good.is/infographics/issue-38-citizen-journalism#open

Original Article

As China’s GDP increases relative to the rest of the world, its investments in foreign countries has also increased. Before 2005, China had “no major investment in Africa”. However, in 2013, China invested in over three times as many countries around the world including over ten African countries.

The article “The World According to China” zooms in and out on a world map while using captions and text overlays to tell the story. The main visualization takes a look at China’s share of each country’s foreign investments as well as the risk associated with that country.

The author’s target audience is those interested in political aspects of China’s recent investments. Through deep dives into the industries receiving Chinese money in countries where the US seems to be withdrawing resources, the author aims to prove that China’s investments are worrying and could have harmful effects on “Western” initiatives in the future.

I think the visualization was effective in giving numbers to connect to a vague idea that I had seen thrown around. It was also effective in convincing me that China was heavily benefiting from investing in countries that were in turmoil.

“China’s money has made it harder for Western-led institutions like the World Bank to demand economic reforms and environmental standards. In all, China was the largest investor in five of the 10 riskiest countries in the world.” 

While the build up made me feel informed enough to draw conclusions, I believe that some of the explanatory text were not as effective as it could have been. For example, the final sentence would have had more impact if it was a conclusion or a description of the effect of the information given instead of another statistic.