October 9, 2017

Makeover Monday: Adult Obesity in the United States

health , line chart , Makeover Monday , map , obesity , United States 2 comments

It's week 41 of Makeover Monday 2017, which can only mean one thing...Makeover Monday Live at TC17! This week, we're looking at adult obesity rates in the United States and this viz from The State of Obesity:

What works well?

Simple title that tells me what the viz is showing
Pulling the smaller States out separately to ensure they don't get lost due to their size
Creating an inlay for Alaska and Hawaii
Including a definite for obese
Great filter action on the regions
Everyone understands maps!
Nice highlight action to show the State on the line chart and vice versa
Great tooltips on the line chart
Keeping all lines on the line chart and highlighting the selected State
Keeping the scale on the line chart at the appropriate intervals
Using colors that people typically will identify with good and bad

What could be improved?

You lose the sense of change in the map.
The height and width of the line chart seem odd. It's too tall for my liking. This accentuates the vertical change.
There's no real story to the data. A more impactful title that has a definitive statement would help keep me there longer.

My Goals

Create something engaging. I'm going to see if something like Michael Mixon's tilemap birth rates chart works well with this data set.
If that doesn't work, make something that shows comparisons well.
Make sure States are easily comparable.
Give States even weight in the viz.
Keep the highlighting by obesity rate and filtering by region from the original.
Make nice tooltips like the original.
Look for stories in the different demographics.
Learn something new!
Have fun at Makeover Monday Live!

With those goals in mind, here are a series of vizzes I made for Makeover Monday week 41 for each of the demographics. Click on any of them for the interactive version.