Question

Locate a data visualization on the web that you think is good. Provide the web address (URL) to the visualization.

• Is this a static or interactive data visualization?
• What does it do well?
• Are there any things you would do differently if you were constructing this visualization?

Answer 1

URL: https://www.pewresearch.org/next-america/

Pew Research presents US demography data and research using interactive data visualization where viewers can view percentage of US population by age groups and interact directly by altering the year (from past to future) to see how demography has and will change with time.

It visualizes changes in horizontal bars (representing group percentage) in a real-time fluid manner as viewer changes year. This helps viewer understand the change easily. The graph is clean, well spaced and colour coded to represent boomer and other age groups (as well as genders). Hovering over a group gives statistics for detailed analysis.

Though the visualization is good, it could be improved by increasing the scale of graph as the subtle changes and differences in group percentage is hard to notice at smaller scale. Moreover, other than differentiating just Boomer group with colour difference, different population generations (GenX, millennials, Gen Z, etc) should also be differentiated so as to provide viewer easy visualization of these groups as well. Also, instead of changing the year by drop down, a real time slider could improve presentation and interaction.