WOMEN IN POLITICS
Data Visualization
DURATION Four months
PROJECT BRIEF To create an interactive data visualization of the representation of women in politics.
BACKGROUND
I have always been interested in the representation, or rather underrepresentation, of women in politics. Even though women's representation in politics has improved in the past few decades, there is still a lot of inequality in power. Part of the reason I wanted to do this project was to visually show viewers how much progress still needs to be made. It can be easy to think that there have been improvements and believe that equality has been achieved. However, when the data is presented in a more visual way, things become more clear.​ I decided to create a visual comparison of the percentage of women and men in various political positions throughout the last century.
OVERVIEW
This project was an independent study, in which I was able to experiment with D3. The project required a great deal of self-motivation, as I chose the content, the time-frame, and the methods used.
RESEARCH
One of the most significant aspects of this project was the research. I wanted to find the different percentages of women in different areas of the government. I searched various different sites, but finally found all the numbers I was looking for on the Pew Research Center website. The research phase also included a lot of time spent searching for the best ways to present the data in a visually pleasing but also understandable way.
STRATEGY AND DESIGN
PHASE 1
After completing the research, I moved into the first phase. This involved sketching out my ideas, and determining what information I wanted to be included, and how I wanted to present it.
I decided that I wanted there to be several screens, with a menu along the left side. While my end product did change along the way, the general layout stayed fairly consistent throughout.
Once I had some initial sketches done, I moved into Illustrator to create a vector prototype. This was also the point where I was able make the stylistic decisions, such as color and fonts. Finally, I began to move everything into code. At this stage, it was all static, with no moving or interactive parts. The goal was simply to get the elements onto the page.
PHASE 2
From there, I moved into the code, using D3, which allowed me to create small animations within the visualization. During this phase, I worked a lot on ensuring that there was user feedback when a user clicked, hovered, or moused-out of an element. I wanted all of that to be solid and work without any glitches, therefore, it ended up being one of my main focuses.
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The central part of this project was the data visualization of the representation of women in politics. My strategy for displaying this data was to use bars that represented the percentage of women and men represented. The bars were in scale to one another, to show how significant a difference between men and women there were in many of the categories. When a user hovers over one of the bars, it displays the percentage, as well as some additional information.
PHASE 3
During the final phase, I worked on adding all the additional items, which was virtually everything except the data visualization. This included a map, which showed users which countries have and haven't had a female leader.
Another element was a video. I have always loved the film Missrepresentation. I have watched it many times, and I felt that it did an excellent job of explaining why this topic interests me, and why I find it to be so important. I had experience adding audio, but I had never added a video clip. It ended up requiring a lot of trial and error, but eventually, the video worked perfectly.
CHALLENGES
This project proved to be more challenging than I had initially anticipated. The primary challenge was merely setting up my own time-frame and deadlines. This project required a lot of motivation and initiative. It was occasionally difficult to keep up with my own deadlines, but in the end, it was influential in improving my time-management skills. Another big challenge of this project was the timeline I initially planned to create. Originally, I wanted a timeline that showcased important political events for women in the last century. I worked for a while to try to understand how to complete this part, and how to make it understandable for viewers. I struggled with how to tackle this aspect, and in the end, I decided to create a politician spotlight instead. This spotlight showcased 50 women who were incredibly impactful in the political world. I felt that this option worked better in the end, though it was a difficult choice to make.
EFFECTIVENESS
I believe the project was very successful. In the end, I was able to create a comparative data visualization that showed users the differences in political representation between men and women, which was my primary goal.