Visualizing Twelve Years of New York

http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/08/18/reshaping-new-york/

Plain text-and-images articles used to be the norm for ages. Then the web world was introduced to a vast array of graphs and charts that accompanied plenty of data-heavy entries, serving their purpose to a great extent. Now, interactive data visualization takes a step further. People’s attention is captured by ‘visuals’ to a significantly higher extent rather than by plain text. When I saw the following amazing job (because it is not just an article) on the New York Times (under the news graphics projects) I was impressed. http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/08/18/reshaping-new-york/

The article ‘Reshaping New York’ represents through an interesting way; how the city changed in 12 years of Bloomberg. This article is amazing both from a data scientist point of view and from a journalist point of view. It engages the reader since it narrates the long-term story of New York’s evolution over the years by using a virtual tour.  The most vital characteristics that make it successful from both aspects include: 1) clean and engaging visuals, 2) excellent use of color, 3) clever use of space, 4) use of white color to avoid fatiguing the reader and 5) little use of text to leave space for the visuals and the graphical information

 Not only does it have 3D pictures to support the text, but also there is a motion effect when scrolling down. Graphically, it is very sophisticated and captures the reader’s attention. The 3D effect is predominant and in combination with the motion effect the result is captivating.  The article covers a large amount of data; the fact that these data are divided between text and visualization avoids making the article boring and overloaded with text information. Thus, despite the fact that a large amount of information is provided, no such thing like endless wordy columns is observed.

The evolution of New York during the Bloomberg years is a topic which one could write a huge chapter or even a whole book about. In this case, the story is supplemented with data, not simple tables or graphs, but a visual tour. From a reader’s perspective, I found this article stimulating, as it kept me engaged as I read the entire story. I really doubt whether I would have read it if it was a classic article in a journal paper. The team that worked on it managed to tell the story in the best possible way. The result indicates it.