Information Design
I’ve been trying to understand — like all of us I suppose — what is the thing we are going thru with this all embracing pandemic. What is the best course of action, where do I stand in this. Not that my opinion really matters, but in principle: as individuals I think we should stay as informed as possible in order to act as informed members of society.
Doing graphics the “print” way
So when I was reading articles on COVID-19 (in the Finnish media) I was a bit annoyed by the lack of insight in the graphics they used. I’ve been working now for some time already with interactive graphics, information design and visual coding. And I feel it is an area which is a bit neglected in our daily media.
The graphics I found seemed to fall into two categories: either very simple, static lines and figures on 2D coordinates — which IMHO had very little to justify their existence. Basically they were done because “you need graphics” or because your boss ordered, not really increasing understanding and actively illuminating the subject. Some of them were really hard to decipher; such as this one on YLE (link to YLE article):
Or the graphics were very complex, interactive web-apps which adjustable parameters, which might be a bit intimidating for your average reader. The threshold for using them – as informative and well executed as they might be – just might be too high. Especially if you were just looking for some insight to be better informed on the subject.
A good example is the REINA-model:
Different approach
So I thought I give it a try i.e taking the same data and trying to make it a bit more understandable. As this is a demo, done only as “pro exercitio” I only made just a 1024px wide version, but would be very simple to do the same responsively i.e. layouts for vertical displays/smartphones as well.
Click here to see the interactive graphic in full screen
In it’s simplicity, I’d say it is very illustrative and makes the point very obvious.
On a more technical note: I embedded it into WP as an OAM wrapper packet; notice how smoothly it scales in this surrounding as well (see below).
Trouble is that when embedded in a ready made template (such as a WP post section) one only has c. 600 px horizontal. To make matters even worse, if you view it with a smartphone, no optician in the world can help you to decipher the content. Considering that majority of people get their world view from their palms… this has some serious implications for their access to information.
But- back to the actual subject: I think the approach I used clearly demonstrates the importance of COVID-testing and the positive benefits it has for controlling the disease.
I find it suprising this kind of simple interactives are not more commonly used in our daily media.