Introduction
Headlines play a key role in introducing and framing a news context. Without using appropriate narratives or terms, news headlines may cause a negative impact on readers’ minds or, even worse, bias the ways readers view the information. For example, women are much less found in the news as compared to men. According to a report published by the Global Media Monitoring Project, women make up only 24% of news subjects. And when women are featured in headlines, they tend to be presented in stereotypically gendered language, It is not hard to find data on the long-term trends in news media regarding the stereotyped ways that women have been presented. I created this visualization dashboard in order to present these trends. (Nicoletti, Sarva, 2022)
Inspiration
Redesign the Visualization
This project was initially designed and done by The Pudding, a digital publication that focuses on applying visualization to explain cultural ideas. I really like how the designer combines the countries, words theme, this project was initially designed and done by The Pudding, a digital publication that focuses on applying visualization to explain cultural ideas. I really like how the designer combines the countries, words theme, years, and words into an interactive area chart. We can see how the designer binds variables together by color to clearly show the variation and frequency of words used over years. However, because the scales of themes are so large it may be hard to compare different words within the theme. Furthermore, I would like to see what the variations arranged by different countries look like. Hence, I decided to redesign this visualization into a dashboard in order to show other perspectives on this data.
Dashboard Layout Reference
To prevent my dashboard from becoming just merely a combination of several charts without key insight To prevent my dashboard from becoming a mere combination of several charts without the key insight behind them, I did some research into how other designers organize the narrative lines of their dashboards. What’s the relationship between every section? How do the designers connect them into a completed story?
I was inspired by a dashboard in the GlobalanceWorld website which was designed by data visualization design consultancy CLEVER FRANKE. The dashboard aims to test various portfolios’ alignments against the 2°C long-term climate stabilization scenario. The section showing the climate impact on the assets of several major companies firstly demonstrates the potential impact on all assets based on rising temperature. The next section lists every asset individually so you can view the exact degree number. This storytelling arrangement could help readers see the big picture of the trends but also looks deeper into the information from single data separately, the same as trying to present the information trends. I think this is the way I can imitate this design.
Methodology
Data
The original dataset was downloaded from The Pudding data source
Tools
Thanks to The Pudding opening the data sources of the project, I could have thorough data without any cleaning process. Then I imported them to Tableau for creating the data visualization dashboard. It is software that can assist us to make serval kinds of charts and infographics without applying complex coding.
Process
About the design process, firstly, I wrote down the variables in the dataset I would use for the project and tried to make every possible comparison between two or more variables to see what insights this comparison could tell. Then I combined the comparison and organized them to become a whole narrative line. The story structure is from viewing the trends of the theme to narrowing the scope to the words’ perspective. Thus, when I was drafting the layout, I initially divided it into two main sections, then thinking about what kinds of charts would be appropriate for presenting the information separately.
Results
Interactive Filter Features
The dashboard offers a view of terms about women using in the headlines over time. In order to show the various dimensions like countries or themes of the information in the limited space, I set up the filter options on the side of the visualization, so readers can choose the values they are curious about.
Reference Imitation
Also, I refer to the dashboard of GlobalanceWorld to juxtapose overall trends and individual data together to create a complete picture for understanding the information.
Reflection
Rusty at Tableau
Because of not using Tableau for quite a long time, I am rusty at using this software and having a hard time finding the functions for sorting and selecting the values I wanted. Moreover, the Tableau dashboard aligning function system is not user friendly and intuitive as other design software like Adobe Illustrator, so I need to spend more effort on arranging my layouts.
Lack of Abundance of Dataset
I was initially planning to only collect just one dataset also without too many variables but apply different angles by various comparing combinations to interpret it and make the dashboard values more consistent. However, as long as I was structuring the storyline, I felt that the content is a bit unsubstantial, and many comparisons are telling the same insights. Next time if I have the chance, I may also connect the other data from The Pudding’s original project data source to make the dashboard story more abundant.
Sources
Nicoletti L., Sarva S. (2022) When Women Make Headlines from
https://pudding.cool/2022/02/women-in-headlines/
Globalance World from
https://fe.globalanceworld.com/