This was much more difficult than I imagined. Having some prior experience with data visualization using Google products like Google Sheets, I thought that I would bet set. Suffice to say, I was wrong. Very wrong. Like @volkamerr, I wanted to do a Bar Chart Race on Flourish to avoid multiple colors and crazy visualization. For nearly 1.5 hours, I struggled to figure out how to correctly label and organize the values so that they would show up correctly like Raphael’s did.
Eventually, I gave up and attempted to make a simple line chart comparing the average count of each name to it’s average rank. To do this, I went to google sheets and filtered each name, found the average, and then changed the “rank” column to reflect the average rank. However, I ran into another problem where I couldn’t get the X-axis to shrink for the average rank, and without hovering over each value, it is hard to tell the small differences between rank. Definitely looking for advice on how to make more unique interactions since even some articles couldn’t help me. Even though it’s imperfect, I think this is an appropriate way to display the difference since you can judge size, filter by options, and compare without too much confusion.
Thinking to the readings and DH in general, my project and any dynamic project promotes interactivity (also like Rafael said) because then users get to choose what to focus on. Even though my project is simple, users can toggle between just average rank, just average count, or both. It’s fairly simple to begin with, but the minimalism makes it easier to filter through and digest. I also tried to use unique colors to be slightly more engaging. The two color shades also help differentiate (however slightly).
This was fun but also frustrating and I could definitely use some help before we use this in the future.
2 thoughts on “Struggles with Data Visualization”
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Sounds like we both had the same struggles with presenting the data in the way we imagined. I like that you were still able to add some interactiveness within your visualization. This makes the data much more enticing to view and play around with. I also like that you added the average rank for each name as well. Great work!
Sarek, I think you did a great job of visualizing the data creatively. I especially appreciate the graph being interactive, where I can change the information I’m looking at. I also ended up graphing rank averages, but struggled to wrangle the data within the Flourish website and ended up using R for that part. So your graph impresses me, and I’m curious to learn more about that step of your process!