https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/gallery/stress-japan
The world of data visualization has the ability to break down data for the masses. At the same time, the form the data takes can easily confuse the reader, leaving them gaining little knowledge of the subject being covered. As stress is one of the most buzzed about subjects, I am curious as to how it affects different parts of the world. I came across a stacked area chart which analyzes "the main preoccupations of Japanese [people] at each stage of their lives". Although I admire that the visualization is not only covering stress in Japan, but also, stress based on age, gender and sleep, I do not think it does a good job explaining the data clearly, probably for the same reason of it taking on too much. What makes this chart overwhelming is that at the bottom of the page, there are age ranges, then the chart itself consists of colours stacked on top of one another, with headings of stress factors on the right. The eye is left bewildered by all of the information. Luckily, once the reader scrolls over each heading, the data becomes slightly more absorable. I understand why the author chose to do a stacked area chart, as the sheer amount of information in this article is difficult to convey in any format. I further appreciate that the headings are both at the right hand corner of the page and on top of each colour. Scrolling over the headings also allows the reader to get a summary of each subject. However, what would have made the data less confusing would have been breaking down the information, so that the reader could clearly see the ages versus stress factors. I cannot think of a chart that could work better, but the visual is not working with this reasearch. A list format would have been ideal in this case. This chart is interactive and easy to use, based on being able to scoll over the heading and search specific information. In fact, the interaction is the strongest part of this visualization. Readers can click on a drop-down menu and seclect specific genders and sleeep times. If a Japanese person thinks of this as a tool to look up their own information, this data works perfectly. Nonetheless, what would have been simpler althogether, would have been to see the data clearly spelled out with the age range and stress factors, instead of broken into colours, especially since some of the colours are similar.
6 comments:
I agree that the chart is extremely hard to understand and I feel you pointed out a lot of the flaws with the confusing chart. I think a different chart with less colour would have been more effective. The text was somewhat hard to read just because everything was so closely spaced together.
I agree with you that this chart has far too many colours, which limits its effectiveness. It actually feels like I'm looking through a kaleidoscope, and as much as I like kaleidoscopes, a data chart is not the place for one. As well, I agree there are probably too many categories in general. Ironically, trying to discern the chart was a tad stressful for me, but I'll make sure to keep some of this info in mind moving forward.
I also agree that this chart was difficult to understand due to the colours. You did a very good job on explaining the strengths and weaknesses of this chart. Also, it was a bit hard to read the assignment due to the colour scheme chosen for your blog and the font size and colour.
One would even say that this particular data visualization causes stress when trying to read it, haha. Totally agree with the gripes you mentioned with too many colours and the saving grace of the interactiveness. The subjective nature of the topic of stress kind of makes it really hard to graph out in the first place. Makes you wonder to what degree is it stresses over "hobbies" than it is stresses over "purpose in life." Having stresses over hobbies seems contradictory if you're also stressing about having no spare time (by the definition of a hobby).
First, I also agree that this chart has too many information and hard to read it specifically. Also, the color of this chart itself and the blog's background make me feel stressful to read it. At last, this is a great assignment.
Hi! While I also agree that the chart is overly colourful which makes it difficult to read, I like how you mentioned the positive aspects of it, showing its clarity with the setup of the chart (labels on the right, etc.). I can't wait to see how you break it down to better show the data and highlight the data's main topic.
Post a Comment