Introduction

Having an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studie and currently pursuing an MS in information experience design. I’ve had curiosity to see how I can merge both environmental awareness and design. Through my information visualization course I was able to create a visual data set in Tableau illustrating the rise in temperature in America. Data was not collected for the state of Georgia. This report will focus on the temperature change within the century of 1900-1999. 

It is of importance to share this data as being a complex species because we depend on the balance of nature. The Earth is ours but as greed grows it can be easy to forget the importance of our ecosystem. 

Inspiration

Throughout the years of 2019-2020 wildfires have been a major topic in social media, also broadcasted publicly via the news. Due to the cause of droughts and intolerable weather patterns, terrain, wildlife, and people have suffered around the world. This report on the Rise in Temperature was made to bring awareness to people with the concern on where our country is going. To get started, I’ve done research on visual datasets with the same related topic and found a series of inspiring work, from the use of color, and design. 

This visualization captures the change in temperature by countries. It is also important for a visualization like this to go viral as it captures the change of temperature from 140 years ago. The colors that are used in this visual are also influential as it expresses cold temperatures with a blue color and yellow to red indicating warmth.

This dashboard visualizes the predicted wheat yields (gains and losses in production of wheat) across the world. I appreciate the intuitive appeal of map visualizations because they help introduce new information to general audiences via a familiar format. The key legend’s color ramp mirrors the real life decaying of plants. I resonated with that as a budding designer because it’s important for the viewer to understand and draw relation (feels like an incomplete sentence).

Methodology

When searching for data the source that was able to provide me with the most accurate statistics was Kaggle. When downloading the data, the data opened up in Numbers. From Numbers, the data needed to be exported to Microsoft Excel where I was able to filter and organize the specifics.  Tableau Public is a free software that can allow anyone to connect to a spreadsheet or file and create interactive data visualizations. In Tableau I was able to upload my excel sheet, and view the generated variables that I was able to manipulate and view what variables I want to show on my x-axis and y-axis.

Results

The first thing I did was look for a way to visualize my data. I already knew that I was focusing on America, and I want to show my data on a map of America. My first approach to showing how America temperature has risen from 1900 to 1999. I then asked myself how do I want to represent the change in temperature. I knew heat was a factor and decided to use the light to dark orange to represent heat. 

When doing a comparison of the two dashboards I noticed that there was that much of a significant difference. The colors in the 1999 dashboard got darker slightly. Still showing the viewer that there has been a slight change in temperature, but nothing too drastic. I then decided to think of other ways to represent this data. Instead of reporting the time frame of change between the years 1900-1999 I decided to take the temperature from 1900 and subtract it from 1999. 

This dashboard appeared more significant in change than the first. Here we are now able to identify specifically, which states had a change in temperature in 1900 and 1999. As you can see the parts of the midwest, north east, and south east has more of a rise in temperature, whereas the west coast grew cooler. 

Reflection

Using Tableau has been an intriguing learning experience. When importing the excel sheet, variables are produced and allows the user to drag and post the variables along the x and y axis. When using this software I liked how the user was able to create and calculate. Offering a place for designers and data scientists to work together and make amazing visual dashboards. 

The best part of this lab was able to learn how to use calculated fields to create a more efficient and satisfying dashboard. I wasn’t at first moved by my first creation, and after learning about calculated fields, I was more intrigued by the colors that were produced to show the change in temperature, making my dashboard more intuitive and intriguing. My only wish will be to live to see how this graph will look in 2099.