Tips for Effective Visualization Design

The Importance of Physical Activity for Adults UK

1. Consider the “Physical activity for adults UK” infographic available on Moodle. Write a short (1000-word) discussion of how effective this is as a means for presenting the information it contains. You should include any particularly good features of the poster, any problems that you have identified and your ideas for improving the design.

You may find it helpful to print out the graphic in colour on A3 paper and look at it at arm’s length.
Your discussion should consider the following aspects of visualisation design:
• What message is the poster trying to provide?
• Colour – Can you see everything? Do the colours fit the subject?
• Text – Can you read everything? Are there too many fonts or styles of text? Is the text too large or too small?
• Graphs – Are the graphs easy to read? Are they of a suitable type for the data that they’re being used to display?
• Graphics – Are there graphics that don’t provide information? If so, are they harmless or do they actively prevent you from seeing information that is being presented? Is the overall design good or bad? Does it raise any ethical issues?
• Cognition – Does it put any unnecessary demands on the viewer in terms of memory load, perception or mental modelling?
• Improvements – How would you improve the infographic? Remember to explain how this would solve any problems previously identified. You may include a rough sketch of any redesigned areas of the graphic if you wish.
In each case, you should support your decisions with references to the research literature.
You should aim for 5-10 reference sources for this purpose and at least half of them should be books or journal papers.

2 Covid Cases Data October 2021 contains a sample of data from the Rapid COVID 19 surveillance data for Wales (available on Moodle) comes from the recently published Public Health Wales data. (Source: Public Health Wales) The single datasheets extracted from the All Wales data provides data captured by MSOA

“Cases and incidence per 100,000 by 2011 middle layer super output areas (MSOAs) as defined by the Office for National Statistics. Data is suppressed for any areas with fewer than three cases”
Based upon this data, create an A3 colour poster that allows viewers to easily answer the following questions:
1. How has the total number of patients testing positive as seen in each local authority (as defined by MSOA) varied over the period?
2. Looking at the Rolling 21 days totals for October 2021 - what is the % of the October totals when compared with the total number of the population testing positive to date?
3. Looking at the All cases data only present this data per Local Authority.
4. Using elements of the headline data.

You should create an A3 poster that includes graphics that allow the viewer to easily answer the questions given. Templates are available on Moodle for A3 posters in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint formats. The poster may have either landscape or portrait orientation and should contain computer-generated (not hand-drawn) graphics.

Microsoft Excel has many different types of visualisations that you may find useful.