Impact of Coronavirus

Information Management 561 - Visualization Design Project.


My Role: Lead Researcher, Brochure Designer.
Group Project including: Trisha Asar and Hannah Gavin.
2/17/2020-3/13/2020

How might we share key information about Coronavirus with our community through a visualization, without contributing to misinformation?

Summary

As 18-24-year-old students at the University of Washington view our Coronavirus visualization, we hope that they will understand not only the cases of the virus but also how they can and should assess their risk. In order to understand if the audience responds to the visualization in the way that we intended, we conducted a user study and iterated on our initial designs.

My Role

  • Defining our audience

  • Designing and conducting user testing

  • Pictograph Visualization

  • Brochure Design

Audience

University of Washington Students

INFORMED

    • Aged between 18-24 so we assume that they are technologically savvy and they engage with social media networks.

    • May have been exposed to information about Coronavirus from a variety of sources, so they will not only have awareness, but also a higher level of understanding.

GLOBAL AWARENESS

    • The University of Washington includes a high rate of international students, about 16.8% of all students. Therefore, this audience is composed of people from all over the world, with friends and families that may be as well.

EDUCATED

    • This audience has at least a high school education and is pursuing a higher degree, which means they have a high level of understanding when it comes to visualizations and data.

FEARFUL

    • This is also a fairly young audience that are living away from home, potentially for the first time. With an upcoming epidemic, we assume there may be high levels of fear and low levels of preparation among this age group.

Audience Questions

  • Should I be worried about Coronavirus?

  • What should I be doing to prepare for this epidemic?

  • How will my peers and I be affected by Coronavirus?

  • How does my understanding of Coronavirus compare to reality?

Ethical Considerations

As the designers of this visualization, it is important for us to address such concerns by making it clear to the audience that the Coronavirus does not have any predilection towards certain racial backgrounds. Individuals who are of Chinese ancestry do not have a greater likelihood of contracting the virus than any other individual. The virus is spread through human contact, impacting all individuals at the same rate.

Sketches

Before utilizing R to create our visualizations, we made sketches to decide which graphs would be best for our audience.

Coronavirus Sketches

User Testing Process

As 18-24-year-old students at the University of Washington view our Coronavirus visualization, we hope that they will understand not only the cases of the virus but also how they can and should assess their risk. In order to understand if the audience responds to the visualization in the way that we intended, we conducted a user study.

Participant Profiles

Before beginning our interviews, we gathered demographic data on our participants. Though we lacked ethnic diversity and variety within our age group, we were able to gather very insightful data. In the future, if we had more time for testing and weren't limited by the coronavirus school cancellations, we would have conducted these interviews in a public setting where we could have sought out a more diverse group.

Preliminary Interviews

Before viewing the visualization, we asked users the following questions:

Question 1: Source of Info

Where have you gotten information about Coronavirus?

Question 2: Thoughts/Feelings

What are your thoughts about Coronavirus? Are you worried about contracting it? Why or Why not?

Question 3: Preparedness

Have you done any preparation for the coronavirus? What preventative measures, if any, have you taken?

Usability Interviews

After showing our brochure to our users, we asked the following questions:

Question 1: Conclusions

What conclusions can you draw from this visualization?

Question 2: Thoughts/Feelings

What are your thoughts about Coronavirus? Are you worried about contracting it? Why or Why not?

Question 3: Preparedness

What are your thoughts on preparation? Do you think you will do anything differently?

Question 4: Assess

Did viewing this visualization change your answers, if so, how and why? Other feedback?

Brochure for User Testing

User Testing Insights

  • The Pictograph was difficult to comprehend because of the scale differences and multiple graphs.

  • Due to the use of news and social media networks, many of these users had a deep understanding of the Coronavirus and it’s impact. Because of this, users utilized the brochure as a tool to reinforce their knowledge instead of as a tool to build understanding.

  • Because this data is constantly changing, the users wanted more information about when the data was collected.

Changes to Visualizations

Pictograph: We attempted to combine the current cases, deaths, and recovered all into a single pictograph. This caused us a lot of trouble because the scale of countries with a high impact, like China, versus countries with a lower impact, like the US. After considering our goal of showing the fatality rates of Coronavirus, we decided to utilize the entire data set to show the global impact.

Map: We updated the visual with a more recent dataset and also ensured that the two visualizations were utilizing the same data. We also added a date to the brochure to display when the visualizations were updated.

Brochure Iteration 2

Final Brochure (Iteration 3)

Challenges

  • Constantly changing data and information - This project began right at the start of Coronavirus spreading to the United States, and particularly the first deaths in Washington state. Because of the timing, we faced consistent challenges with changing data and impact on society. We updated our visualizations with each new iteration as well as the information that we provided.

  • Bringing awareness without inciting fear - Because of the sensitive timing of the release of this project, we wanted to ensure that we provided reliable data with practical information that would not cause panic but would also not diminish the circumstances.

Key Takeaways

Due to the challenges we experienced, we recognized the importance of context when presenting data, especially in a visualization for a general audience. It was our responsibility to provide the necessary information in a way that our audience would understand so that we could minimize panic.