When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth - For this week's entry i decided to look at data and statistics relating to Dinosaur Fossil discovery using a fictional data set (due to the limited classified data available). I decided to create my report in a Museum kiosk display-like style theme, integrating fun background images mixed with interactive elements and buttons for users to click/press to navigate from page to page. The colours used in visuals have been modified on each screen to correspond nicely with the background image and can be targeted educationally at both Adults and Children.
This starts with a welcome screen providing the user with useful information and a start the tour button which will navigate them to the following screen.
The second screen titled "The seven greatest dinosaur discoveries of the last 200 years" is a line chart i've modified to look like a timeline including historic events in fossil discoveries. This screen includes a Play Axis visual which will auto show each historic moment one at a time at a relevant speed for that extra animated effect. Tooltips display when hovering over each point marker, to add an additional interactive element for the user.
The third screen titled "Tracking Dinosaur Fossil Discoveries: Over a Century of Paleontological Progress" showcases how many fossil disoveries have been made over the decades since 1900, with an additional forecast using the current trajectory. Below that is a multi ring donut chart with an accompanying text box detailing how discoveries are split between dinosaurs categories from one of the three periods in the Mesozoic era (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous).
The foruth screen titled "How big are the fossils discovered?" provides useful information of the size of fossils discovered, categorised as either Small (up to 3m), Medium (3m to 10m) or Large (Over 10m) based on length. This page uses a parastichy visual to highlight the breakdown in total discoveries by those 3 categories with descriptive labels below detailing that percentage breakdown colour coding to the visual above. The beauty of a parastichy visual in this context is to highlight the category volume within the total volume based on colour. 60% out of 100% is much more visually identifiable for example, when you have 100 dots and 60 of them are coloured in one colour, it expresses the domination greater as soon as the user sees it. The spiral nature of it in this context can also relate to a fossil. Next to this in the report is 3 image slicer selections for the user to select between Large, Medium and Small fossils with relateable images which change in colour from a disabled grey when hovered/selected. This will alter the imformation in the KPI tile below which showcases the annual discoveries of the previous decade, it's growth from the previous decade and a sparkline of how the annual discoveries have grown or decreased over the years for the selected fossil size.
The final screen titled, "Where do we find all the Fossils?" showcases where around the globe fossils are discovered. This is only displayed at a high level, so is only at a Continent level, which is displayed on a map visual. This map visual is colour coded light to dark based on most discoveries to least, with North America being the continent with the most discoveries, Antarctica being the least. Below this map visual is a matrix table showing a full breakdown for all Continents detailing the total number of discoveries, the yearly average with an accompanying sparkline to show the rising trend in fossil discoveries. The final field in this table is the predominant fossil size found on each continent, to provide an extra educational insight as to where larger dinosaurs may have lived, compared to smaller (or more decomposed) dinosaurs/fossils. Both the map and table dynamically interact with eachother for the user.
This report comes adapt with relevant tooltips and alternative text providing all the data to those with visual impairment so they can visualise all data hosted on screen and i've layed out the tab order so that aspect flows nicely. All references cited are included by hovering over the info icon which appears on each screen. Whilst the dataset is fictional, it is mirrored as close to real-data as possible thus corresponds the real life trend of discoveries ever increasing, as showcased in the sparklines on the final screen.
Thank You
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