After an epic week 20 for Makeover Monday, I had great expectations for this week. Another great data set, this time looking at global arms imports and exports. But dang it was tough! I really struggled this week making something I was happy with. In the end, time is up and I learned a lot.

Let’s start by looking back at the original visualisation.

What works well?

• The colors clearly distinguish imports and exports.
  
• The labels provide the needed context.
• Nice small line charts for Europe and the Middle East along with an indicator for the rate of change.

What could be improved?

• The title of the article doesn’t match the chart.
  
• It’s hard to compare countries.
• Why were the countries that are shown selected? Are they the top N?
• Why is the timeframe 2011-2015? That seems a bit arbitrary.
• Why are there only sparklines for Europe and the Middle East?
• The lower section with the flags has nothing to do with the map.
• In the lower section, why don’t UAE and China show awaiting delivery? It should be consistent.
• Is there a better story that can be told? The data goes back to 1950 after all.

I decided to focus on the title of the article: “The Militarization of the Middle East”. And I focused even farther by looking at the post-9/11 era from 2002-2015. America initiated a war with the Middle East. I wanted to know how that impacted the import of arms to the region.

Once again this was a week of iterations. I started with this small multiple map view, but didn’t think it showed the change through the years very well.

Click the image for the interactive version

I then looked at a slope graph comparing the % of total arms imported in the region by country in 2002 compared to 2015. This definitely shows the rate of change better, but I lose the context of the years in between.

Click the image for the interactive version

Maybe a DNA chart will work better than the slope graph? Not really, it just flattens it out.

Click the image for the interactive version

I was getting frustrated by this point, so I decided to take the opportunity to learn a new technique. I read Matt Chamber’s blog post recently on how to build ranked bump charts and thought this would make a great use case for this type of chart. In this view, I can see how a country moves year by year in the ranking of arms imported into the Middle East. I really like being able to click on a country and see it highlighted.

What the bump chart loses, though, is the context of the overall value of the arms imported. So to take care of that, I included the sparkling which also updates when you click or tap on a country. In the end, I’m satisfied and I learned something new. That’s a bit of what Makeover Monday is about.