This is a data visualization created prior to the 2013 N.F.L. draft to give a visual representation, for each year from 1995 to 2012 inclusive, to show “where” in the N.F.L. draft were the “best” players for that year picked. Essentially, you can think of this visualization as answering a question like, “How good are professional teams at picking the players that will turn out to be the best?” For this visualization, the “best” player is picked according to some criteria that were determined after the fact. Furthermore, you can show the nth best players (up to 20 players) for each year by adjusting a sliding scale.
With regards to visibility, it is difficult to tell immediately what the focus of the visualization is—am I supposed to be looking at the toggle switch, reading the information on the page, or looking at the chart? Much of the visualization is also quite small and hard to read, but it looks aesthetically pleasing otherwise. Some of the labeling is also unclear, and could be improved. For example “Select Threshold” could be better written as “Select number of best players,” or something like that.
This is related to the visibility component in that because there are so many things the user is presented with, it is hard to tell what direct effect the sliding scale has. Also, because there are many things going on at one time (one or more red lines being added or removed to a dozen rows at the same time) the mapping is not immediately clear.
Something regarding the mapping that I didn't notice until I used the visualization for awhile was that mousing over a line for a given year will show you the name of the player you are hovering over, and will also give you their name. Furthermore, hovering over a player at the bottom of the screen will show where they appear on the chart. This mapping appears more as an easter egg than a feature that is immediately clear to the user.
The conceptual model for this visualization is quite simple and easy to understand, but it is not intuitive or immediately clear what is going on because there is so much information being presented at once. It would have been less interesting but simpler to understand if there had been one year at a time, or a way of selecting a year range.
This visualization has very clear feedback, which is good; as a result of moving the sliding scale, more red lines are drawn along the chart for each year
Since there are few opportunities for interaction in this visualization, I am not sure that there are many opportunities to increase the affordance, other than making the design more “football-oriented,” e.g., making the sliding scale a football, etc.