Interactive visualization is still alive

Phew. Close call.

New York Times graphics editor Gregor Aisch noted during a talk that 85 percent of readers didn’t click on the buttons of a popular interactive. So Dominikus Baur pondered the usefulness of interaction. The answer was yes. It’s all about purpose.

To clarify, Aisch recently came back to the 85 percent figure.

Knowing that the majority of readers doesn’t click buttons does not mean you shouldn’t use any buttons. Knowing that many many people will ignore your tooltips doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use any tooltips.

All it means is that you should not hide important content behind interactions. If some information is crucial, don’t make the user click or hover to see it (unless you really want to). But not everything is crucial and 15% of readers isn’t nobody.

Aisch then gives a handful of good reasons for interaction in news graphics. The gist, and what I see over here on this modest site, is that most people who come to interactive graphics on the web won’t care enough to click on things. However, for the 15 percent of people who do, it’s worth the added extra effort.

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3-D chart for economy’s future

Yield curve

People like to poke fun at 3-D charts, mostly because they don't work or a third dimension just isn't needed. However, this chart by Gregor Aisch and Amanda Cox for the Upshot is a fine exception to the rule.

It is a yield curve that shows "how much it costs the federal government to borrow money for a given amount of time" which tends to be a good indicator for where the economy is headed. Time is shown on the horizontal axis, and percentage yield per year is shown in the vertical. The rates for 3-month, to 6-month, up to 30-year loans are shown in the depths of the chart.

With just the initial view alone (shown above), I think the chart confuses many, but the tour of the data at different angles accompanied by explanations make it work. For example, the next step in the narrative transitions to a single timeline to see rates at the time of publication.

Single shot

The smooth transitions at callouts at each step help keep you oriented. Plus, you can rotate the chart yourself by clicking and dragging.

So good.

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