Teaching:TUW - UE InfoVis WS 2008/09 - Gruppe 09 - Aufgabe 3

Aufgabenstellung

Zu beurteilende Grafik

Biggest Drips: Annual abstraction of treshwater resources

Critics on the Graphics

Headline

The headline is badly formatted. It isnt well positioned and the text doesnt really explain what the graphics are all about. A short and precise title would help the viewer to get a first idea of what the graphics show.

"Biggest Drips" is completely unnecessary since it is no essential information and should be dropped from the graphics therefore [Few, 2004a].

For a short description of the graphics, "Annual abstractions of freshwater resources" is not a good choice either. The meaning of the graphics could be expressed in a more simple way/expression.

Sub-headline

The Sub-headline contains two different units: date and unit information. To avoid confusing the viewer, those should be merged or rearrangend.

"Mid-90's" is no exact year and may be a sign of bad research of data.

"Thousands of cubic meters per person" is a quite long description. It could be abbreviated (1,000m³) or the unit of data could be changed to cubic meters (m³). Changing the unit would make it even easier to comprehend the data. For Denmark the viewer has to calcuate 0.19 * 1000 to get the actual water consumption. Changing the unit and writing 190 instead of 0.19 therefore makes a lot of sense.

Ink

The graphics contain way too much ink in general. The graphics for example need four(!) pages to fulfill an easy task: comparing one attribute of 20 countries.

The data-ink ration is very bad - there is much ink but little data. One should always try to reduce non-data ink to a minimum and enhance data-ink. [Few, 2004a]

The background is filled with too much (and same) ink. For example, gridlines, shades and little waves in the water. Those should all be dropped since they distract the viewer. [Few, 2004b]

Raindrops show proportions but overload the graphics. This is espacially true for image number four where the drip for the U.S. doesnt fit into the borders.

Colors

Unimportant data is much more emphasized (e.g. by colors) than important data. The difference between background and data should always be very distinct [Few, 2004a]. Therefore it is a bad idea to draw the background of the graphics in the same color tone as the data itself (blue).

Colors are not used well in general. Important data (numbers) are in white which is the least "powerful" color. [Few, 2004a]

There are too many different colors used. This is not useful because it distracts the viewer. [Few, 2004b]

Font-Size

Graphics just use one fontsize/-style for all text. Important parts of the data could be emphasized to help the viewer understand what the graphics want to tell. [Few, 2004a]

The scaling of numbers seems not well chosen. The page numbers at the bottom of the graphics for example, have the same font-size as the water consumption data.

Page numbers

The numbers of the pages as well as the "back" and "next" buttons are probably too big (font-size is the same as the important data).

Pages

The table is divided into 4 different pages which leads to bad readability and comparability. The data should be merged into one table by placing the different pages adjacent. Grouping connected data - according to [Few, 2004b] - is an essential part when organizing/enhancing data-ink.

Abbreviations

As pointed out in [Tufte, 1999], words should always be spelt out or at least described if an abbreviation is used. The terms OECD or U.S., even if they are quite common, should be described.

Highlighting

OECD average is not highlighted although is not a country (as other data).

Optimized Graphics

Improvements

All unneccessary non-data ink was removed. The viewer is no longer distracted by flashy background colors or useless "splash" effects.
The water drops were replaced by a simple bar chart. To give a connection to the graphs topic (water) the bars are colored blue.
The bars are horizontically arranged in order to allow easier comparison of the data. According to [Few, 2004a] they are the first choice when displaying ranking relationships.
The water consumption data is displayed as a bar and as a number. While the bars gives a good "first glance"-idea of the topic, the numbers allow specific comparison between the different countries. The numbers are also right-aligned for better viewing.
The only column which is not a country (OECD average) is enhanced by using a different color.
For a better understanding the title of the graph was changed to a simplier one. This, combined with the new sub-headline, gives a better description of the graphs topic.
As described in the "Critics on the Graphics" we changed the measured unit from 'thousands of cubic meters' to simply 'cubic meters'.
The abbreviation for OECD is now described at the bottom.
Colors were only used when they helped grasping the data more easily.

References

[Few, 2004a]:Stephen Few, Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten, Analytics Press, 2004, Chapter 7 - General Design for Communication.