Final Project Proposal

My thesis partners (Mary Beth and Corinne) and I went into the thesis process looking to design something that would increase engagement with environmental policies in government. We have spent the last 8 months interviewing citizens all over the country to understand how this issue is perceived. We interviewed environmental organizations, politicians and policy experts to understand how the system currently works and what areas are prime for intervention.

In order to identify our problem/thesis we have conducted over 60 interviews with subject matter experts, politicians and citizens. From those interviews, we have identified and synthesized over 350 insights. The insights have been categorized to understand what barriers currently exist for citizen engagement and what opportunities might exist for us to address.

Based on the synthesis of our research we identified 3 key takeaways:

From there, we refined our problem statement:

There is a lack of citizen engagement around environmental issues due to the complexity of local government.

For this data visualization I am looking to answer the question:

What are the opportunities and barriers that influence a citizen’s engagement with local environmental issues?

That visualization will speak to our thesis statement and our ultimate goal of designing a solution that will:

Enable citizens to partner with their local elected officials to address environmental issues.

My team and I have been looking at the breakdown of barriers and opportunities to engagement for months and it’s very clear in my mind. So, I’m excited to create a visualization that makes this hierarchy as clear to anyone looking at our research as it is to our team.

I found the Data Visualization Catalogue  to be particularly helpful for deciding on how to break down our data. I was able to narrow it down to two chart styles and am hoping for some feedback in class to help get clarity on which would be best. The first is the Sunburst Diagram, which is a great way to pack a lot of the Hierarchical Data  we’ve uncovered into one clean image.

I really like this Interactive Sunburst Chart although I think it may be a bit outside my skillset? This Gay Rights by Type version of a sunburst diagram make me even more confident I can tell my story with this style.

The other style I’m exploring is Parallel sets. I would be able to use the same barrier and opportunity dataset used in the sunburst diagram, but visualize is slightly different.

Below are some very rough sketches for how I think the data could be visualized in these two styles:

Sketch for Sunburst Diagram:

Sketch for Parallel Set Chart:

I’m still playing around with the style I want for this project. Part of me wants to do a high-contrast color graph, i.e. black background, with bright colors:

I’m also interested in potentially doing something more handmade:

 

You can see more of the ideas I’m looking at as inspiration in my Moodboard via Pinterest here.

I’m REALLY excited about this assignment, Thanks Joey 🙂