Visualising cases of measles, mumps and rubella in the USA from 1928-1990

I am a student from Swansea uni and for a coursework we are analysing and visualising data from Project Tycho (https://www.tycho.pitt.edu/)

I have created a tree map that shows the hierarchy between measles, mumps and rubella within the states of America from the years 1928-1990. The hierarchy first divides the tree in to diseases, with the most numerous diseases appearing further towards the left and towards the top. Then the same occurs within each disease node but for the states of America.

Visual Design Type: Treemap

Name Of Tool: Tableau

Country: USA

Disease: Measles, mumps, rubella

Year: 1928-1990

Visual Mappings:

Colour: colour is mapped to disease

Text: I have used text to represent the states

Shape: each outer rectangle represents a disease, whilst the inner rectangles represent a state

Size: the size of the rectangles corresponds to the frequency of the illness, so the size of the outer rectangle for measles represents the total number of people with measles, and the size of the inner rectangles would represent the number of people in each state with measles

Position: the largest elements are on the left, with the largest element the top-left, and the smallest being the bottom-right. Also, the white space between elements is larger dependent upon their relative positions in the tree’s hierarchy

Hierarchy: they are grouped firstly by disease, then within each disease they are grouped by the frequency of the disease in each state

Unique Observation:

From the tree map, we can determine that measles is the most numerous disease, then mumps, and then rubella is last. We are also able to establish there is a correlation between population and the frequency of an illness.

Data Preparation:

To prepare the data set, I had to download 3 separate data sets for measles, mumps, and rubella, and then collate them in to one set.

DOI:
Measles: 10.25337/T7/ptycho.v2.0/US.14189004
Mumps: 10.25337/T7/ptycho.v2.0/US.36989005
Rubella: 10.25337/T7/ptycho.v2.0/US.36653000

Literature:
When helping to decide on what colours to use for my tree map, I looked at the paper “UX Color Theory: Applying Color Knowledge To Data Visualization” by Leigh Boone, Andrew Evans, and Chris Rogers. I then decided to go with decreasing intensities of orange. The decreasing intensity refers to the decreasing frequency of the disease, and orange refers to the seriousness of the topic. I did not choose to use red because my visualisation does not include fatalities, and red might suggest deaths.

Question:
Do you think the colour scheme I have chosen to use could be improved upon? Is it visually appealing, and is it immediately obvious what the colours represent?

It’s very 70s :stuck_out_tongue:

Not necessarily my favourite colour palette but it works well for those who suffer colour blindness.

The contrast on the darkest and lightest colours meet accessibility guidelines but the mid range colour does not.

This tool should help: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

Also if you are looking for a tool to help choose or generate colour palletes as well as checking their suitability for colour blind individuals. Check this out: https://coolors.co/404e5c-4f6272-b7c3f3-dd7596-cf1259

I didn’t think it was very appealing either. Thanks for the resources, I will check them out.

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