[okfn-discuss] Alpha release of Where Does My Money Go? prototype

Thu Nov 12 21:00:40 UTC 2009

>> * One immediately misses more data to be able to dig deeper and explore more
>
> Agree -- though this is largely a limitation of the data :)

I realize that. Maybe you could make that fact more obvious so that
the attention that this will draw can put some pressure on the
government to publish more detailed budget data?

>> * I'm not thrilled with the "pie charts on regions" map, and actually
>> think that you'll find such visualizations used as examples of bad
>> infographic design in a lot of literature, even works of some of the
>> new advisors :)
>
> Point taken. Do you have any suggestions for better representations of
> that data? (Or maybe we should just not do it at all).

One approach would be to add "Spending" as a (default?) choice for the
multiple bar charts. It is far easier to compare sizes of bars in bar
charts, than sizes AND slice shares of a pie chart. In order to link
the map to the regions, you could use a mouse-over highlight, so that
when the mouse cursor hovers over Wales, that bar chart gets a
highlighted background and vice versa.

Side note: radio buttons are often better than drop down menus when
there are only 2-4 things to choose from. They display all the
available options without user action and provide a one-click access
to choosing one of them.

>> * As a user, once I've found something of interest I'd like to be able
>> to export the raw data somehow to use in Excel, SPSS, for importing
>> into a database, etc.
>
> Right. All of the raw is available via: http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/data/
>
> But how that get integrates in is a another question. We're working on
> backend "store" interface for the data but for the prototype we are
> focusing (out of the necessity) on the visualization side of things.

A link from the Flash-app to the data set would already cover most use
cases, until something more sophisticated is in place.

>> * There are a lot of opportunities to add tooltips with additional
>> information (such as amounts, etc.) on mouse over.
>
> What kind of information would you like added and where?

Hover on any bar (stacked and whole alike) could show the value of the
bar or section. Hover on a data point of a time series chart could
also show the value. Hover on a bubble, especially the smaller ones,
in the "UK Wide" graph could show title and value. Maybe there are
more...

Keep up the good work.

-h