I'd really appreciate comments on this graphic/movie. Does it work? How can it be improved? The idea is to give viewers a sense of scale they can relate to - a genuine feel for the numbers.
I don't seem to be able to embed the video in this post, but it's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkS0-AukOBo
Thanks for looking,
Adam
Hi Adam,
I really like the idea you have. I think it might help to see real world objects of the same weight. I personally still can't relate to the y-axis. For instance, when it gets to 5g is that like the same as a grape? Or an apple?
Also, I don't think the businesswoman adds anything to your chart.
Thanks for posting it. It has the potential to be very powerful.
Hi Krees,
Thanks very much for your feedback - very vauluable, I'm already glad I asked.
The business woman is there to provide real-world scale. Each of the cubes (which contain 1 gramme of carbon dioxide) is 8 cm high. It appears that isn't obvious. My intention is to focus on the volume, which is a much more intuitive way to think about the quantity of gases than mass (weight).
How can I make it clearer that the woman is part of the scaling and not just chart-junk? What/who should I use in her place?
Can you add other markers? Place the woman at the US end and an inchworm (or something far more clever than that?) at the Somalia end?
Overall very nice but I think it could be half the runtime and not lose any impact.
Hi Nathan,
I love your site. It's great to see postings like this asking for, and getting, your audience's feedback.
I think there's a place for animation in info viz, but I'm not so sure that the data you're trying to show call for it.
Ask yourself this question, if you just showed the last frame of the graph would your audience be as well informed as they would be by watching the entire 30 second clip? I think the answer's 'yes.'
If you watch the master of graphical animation, Hans Rosling (and I bet you have), I don't think you could say that his watching the last frame of his movies would be as informative as watching the entire movie because his movies tend to show trends that change over time. In addition, I thin it's hard to use animation in a graph without narration. Dr. Rosling's movies don't stand on their own very well. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he's a rock star of a presenter. Anyway...
I'm having a hard time getting my head around the story that the movie is trying to tell. What "real-time" is being referred to? A day, a year? If you're going to animate this, the time increment should be shown.
If what we're seeing is CO2 output per day, by country, then I think you'd be fine just showing the amount, in grams (or lbs for your American audience) by country, sans animation.
To make reading the chart easier I'd flip the axes, and put the countries on the Y and pounds on the X. This way, your readers won't need to struggle with the angling of the countries to read them. I'd also get rid of the image of the woman. The image is more distracting than it is informative. If you just show the grams or pounds most people will understand that the US is emitting, per capita, as much CO2 as a person weighs. Although the real story of the chart is not that, it's that the US, Canada and Australia are the leading emitters of CO2, by a factor or nearly 2X when compared to other 'developed' nations.
I'd also remove the two tone shading from the background. It makes the bars on the bottom half of the chart appear different than the top half. If that's your intent, by using the shading as a reference line, then use a standard reference line and label it accordingly.
Also, the mixing of weight and height on the Y axis is a valiant effort to double the information being shown on one axis, but it's more confusing than illustrative. People are expecting 1 variable per axis. If you want to stick with this visualization, I'd go with weight.
Keep up the good work!
John C. Munoz
http://www.bzintelguru.com
Hi John,
I think Adam was showing the actual 30 seconds of realtime.
I think it's a really neat idea to show this data in real-time. However, I can't make the connection between volume (that would be cubic meters) to the length of the bars (which are measured in meters as far as I can tell).
Maybe you can use a familiar volume to illustrate the differences, something like (2l) soda bottles could do. In that case it might actually be more striking to show how quickly they empty, rather than fill up.
It would also be interesting to show how huge the difference is between the countries at the lower and and countries at the upper end, after an hour, a day and a year. That's when people will be really struck.
Thank you all for your helpful comments. I think I have a lot of work to do to make it clearer what the animation is trying to communicate.
I'm actually a bit of a purist when it comes to charts. I generally try to maximise the data/ink ratio and eschew 'chart junk'. If I were simply trying to show a comparison of per-capita emissions I would have made a simple, flat barchart showing annual values for per-capita emissions. There certainly wouldn't have been a business women for decoration (not on MY chart, though decoration has a place sometimes as Nathan pointed out on the FlowingData blog today http://bit.ly/4pJHo).
What I was actually trying to do was combine an illustration of a quantity of gas with a chart. The idea was to give viewers a physical feel for the rate as well as insight into the numbers. The shape of the bars is intended to represent actual gas - the actual space it would occupy. The woman wasn't there for decoration but to give a sense of scale to the illustration of gas - the physical dimensions. To minimize 'noise' I chose a simple perspective and tried to use no more tricks than are absolutely necessary to help the viewer see it in 3 dimensions - a horizon with a sky, and shadows. None of this seems to be coming through very clearly.
The chart is actually part of a set, but I haven't rendered the video for the others yet:
This still from a video shows a day's emissions. Again, the woman is there for scale - the chart is supposed to illustrate the actual physical dimensions of the gas.
This still from another video shows a year's emissions. Again, the UN Building is there for scale - the chart is supposed to illustrate the actual physical dimensions of the gas. This is how much we each emit per year.
This video shows the whole world's carbon dioxide emissions to scale in real-time (i.e. what it would look like if the world's emissions were emanating from one place):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1vbtnExw_g
If anyone has any tips for how I can make the intention clearer in the animations themselves I would continue to be very grateful.
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