Good/Bad Web Interface: blacknegative

The Migration Observatory

Do Yeun Kim

Goal of the website

The Migration Observatory gathers information up to 2013 on immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees that appeared in the UK's newspapers such as the Tabloid, the Midmarket, and the Broadsheet. They attempt to answer the following questions:

1. "How did the amount of coverage mentioning each migrant group change over time?"
2. "What words were typically used to describe each migrant group?"
3. "How often did different people or organisation appear within news coverage?"
4. "Which people tended to appear together within newspaper items?"

Apprehension

The graphs seem effective regarding deliverance of general tendency. In most graphs, relatively large figures, saturation or hue, and corresponding color schemes are used to emphasize data or show the relative abundance or frequency at which the topic appeared. If the user can assume what these variables indicate, it is easy for the user to apprehend the graphs. However, these variables are not explicitly explained, which makes it inconvenient for the user. Also, it is not too difficult to see relative tendency. However, there is a general lack of legends, axis, or descriptions that would allow the users to get a firm grasp of the data. For example, the first graph does not have the y-axis, which prevents the user from truly understanding the graph if the user were attempting to get the numbers, not general idea.

Clarity

Most elements are color-coded and arranged so that it is easy to distinguish among them. The graph for the third question, however, may be a bit unclear due to the nature of webs. While clicking on a node emphasizes the particular node and connected nodes, these are still not quite distinguishable from the rest of the lines and nodes, due to uniformity and color scheme. This graph may have been more clear had the emphasis been achieved by color that greatly stands out from the dark blue background or if the nodes not pertaining to the current search become further transparent.

Consistency

All four graphs are of different type and nautre. There is a line graph, a slew of words, a network graph, and pie graphs. This greatly reduces consistency, but it does not greatly reduce understanding of the data, as each graph is strategically chosen to maximize effectiveness of data representation. In fact, if all four questions were represented with line graphs, it would have been more difficult to comprehend. There is a unifying color scheme, however, that can be of help. Immigrants are green , Migrants yellow , Refugees orange , and Asylum Seekers red , for example.

Efficiency

While each of the graphs is quite dense as the graphs represent data of multiple facets and nature, the user can narrow down, or specify, the data being displayed by clicking on buttons. All graphs except for the network graph have functions to allow the user to choose which of the newspapers or topics the user wouldl like to isolate. This effectively increase efficiency for those that want to learn about particular information. However, there are other ways to increase efficiency of the graphs. For example, if the user can filter the information being displayed, as we see in Amazon.com, it can improve efficiency.

Necessity

These graphs are much better than tables or texts in representing these data. The data involved are highly complex and closely related. For this amount of data, if one were to display them with a table, one would need a 3D table with multiple subtables. It is difficult for me to say if the variables being displayed are ample enough to convey the entirety of the issue, but I am not knowledgeble enough in this field to conclude so. To summarize, I do not know if these representations are necessary or if what I can see is good enough to convey the entirety of immigration issues, but I do know that given the amount of information being handled, graphic representation is necessary.

Truthfulness

It is impossible to dictate how truthful these graphs are. There are no legends or specific numbers that would allow the user to note the actual values the plots represent. It is not difficult, once again, to note the relative intensity or frequency. The problem is that there are no scales present either, making it impossible for the users to figure out how much this relative differences are. Due to lack of clarity the graphs' truthfulness cannot be assessed.