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In this exercise, we review good public visualisations to understand what makes them effective. This is a group exercise in two parts.
Firstly, each group chooses one of the visualisations below. Please could each group choose a different visualisation. Each group will make a short visualisation to the class explaining which visualisation was chosen and why.
Groups then review their chosen visualisation and consider:
Each group makes a presentation to the class.
Here is a list of visualisations. We’ve split them into those that are health-related (since many attendees are interested in this topic) and others.
The Kings Fund, a UK consultancy specialising in the NHS and health policy, has two short reports about the NHS. Each of these reports contains a variety of excellent visuals. These are the NHS Workforce and an overview of the NHS.
The States of Jersey have produced a 33 page report Disease Projection Report 2023 to 2053. This contains lots of charts spanning several different visual types e.g., dumbbell chart on page 8, clustered column chart and line chart on page 9. Most pages also start with a tiny infographic that highlights one key number. Choose one or two visuals and/or inforgraphics that interest you.
These pre-COVID visualisations from the Wall St Journal dramatically show the impact of vaccines to reduce the prevalence of infectious diseases in the 20th century. The Impact of Vaccines -WSJ.com
Croydon’s Annual Public Health Report 2017 has several infographics here - choose one that you find most interesting. You may want to choose the population profile infographics on pages 9 - 11 or the socio-economic profile, linking deprivation with disability, on page 18.
The UKHSA data dashboard is based on the UK Coronavirus data dashboard but now shows the prevalence of other resporatory diseases. England Summary Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK
The ONS have created a scrolly-telling set of visuals from the Census 2021 data in an interactive report. How the population changed where you live, Census 2021 - ONS
Tortoise, a political journalism team specialising in slow news, provide a visualisation that shows political contributions to MPs and party by donors. It combines linear storytelling with interactive bubble charts. They have also built a Better Food Index which ranks the UK’s largest foods providers and combines visuals such as heat maps with elegant prose.
The Economist has a light-hearted look at currency rates (if that isn’t a contradiction-in-terms) The Big Mac Index , TheEconomist It also visualises the popularity of dog breeds
The BBC Sport’s Premier League Table shows the position of the football teams in the Premier League. Best practices guidelines in data visualisation would suggest that a table is the worst method to help people see patterns and trends in a dataset - but many people love this table! Why? Premier League Table - Football - BBC Sport
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have several visualisations to chart the changing fashions of Baby names in England and Wales. If you would like to see how the ONS covers the flip side of this, take a look at the horizon chart of deaths by drug poisoning over the last 25 years.
Every day the Economist produces a chart on a topical subject. These are often a great combination of simple annotated chart, pithy title and short explanatory article. The link will show some thumbnails of recent charts. Choose one that interests you. Graphic detail
This is a popular article on the BBC News Website. It is personalisable - you can enter your salary and it will show which areas of the UK you can afford House price calculator: Where can I afford to rent or buy? - BBC News
Two visualisations try to show a large amount of quantitative financial data in a single table. Compare Yahoo Finance Major world indices - Yahoo Finance and the FT Markets data - stock market, bond, equity, commodity prices -FT.com
This a call to action on climate change. It compresses a lot of data into one (too?) simple visualisation. #ShowYourStripes. You may want to compare it to the table heatmap of the same dataset in this BBC article. The chart that defines our warming world - BBC News
The Information Capital is a coffee table book that maps London life in innovative ways. This link shows four of the visualisations from the book - choose one of these. Remember that the visualisation is primarily meant to be viewed in print. London: The Information Capital - Oliver Uberti
The New York Times shows an animated, interactive bubble diagram of President Obama’s 2013 budget proposals Four Ways to Slice Obama’s 2013 - NYTimes.com