About this project

Design thinking and process

When the world is working on speeding up the vaccination process and recovering the economy, what is happening in India right now makes a clear announcement to the world: this is not over. Starting from March, cases in India have doubled from 10,000 to 100,000 per day. The worse thing is that the cases didn’t stop soaring - since April 24, there are more than 300,000 daily new cases in India, and until today (May 12, 2021), there are still more than 380,000 cases every day. The soaring is terrifying - the country is running out of beds, oxygen, and all medical supplies. The mass gathering of Kumbh Mela, which is one of the biggest religious festivals in the world that happens every 12 years, is to be seen as “the” reason for this surge - no social distancing, no COVID testing, no mask. I think it would interesting to use India’s daily new case data to compare against the four most important “bathing” (Shahi Snan) dates and how they are correlated, as a way to analyze the situation in India and how political decision-making can ruin ordinary people’s lives.

Applied learning theories and design principles

Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (R. Mayer)

The design of this project follows a number of Mayer’s CTML design principles and visual design principles in order to create a clean and effective design to reduce the extraneous load and maximize germane load when users are using the app. Here is a list of CTML principles I used for this prototype:

• Spatial Contiguity Principle: humans learn best when relevant text and visuals are physically close together.

  • Text annotation is placed next to the corresponding data point, which saves the effort of learners. Thus offload some cognitive load when they are reading and understanding the graphic.

• Signaling Principle: humans learn best when they are shown exactly what to pay attention to on the screen.

  • The time frame of the event start date and the 14-day incubation period are designed in different colors with different symbols, which signal that different interpretations need to be implemented for different data points in order to understand the relationship between the dates and the number of daily new cases.

Multiple Representation Principle in CTML (S. Ainsworth)

Multiple representations are used to support and enhance learning outcomes. They play a complementary role when learners exploit differences in computational properties or information by switching between representations and selecting the appropriate representation for the task at hand. The line chart with the variables of time of the event and the number of cases can be seen as multiple representations serving its constructing function.

Constructing function means using two or more representations so when learners integrate them they achieve a deeper understanding of the domain - the combination of time of the event and the number of cases being represented on the same chart shows the correlation between the two variables, thus help the learners to see how massive gathering have affected the increase of COVID-19 daily new cases for India.

Information visualization theories (E. Tufte)

Visualizations help to describe some structure, patterns and anomalies in the data, as well as communicate information to people. According to Edward Tufte, there are four essential guidelines for visual information representation:

• Graphical Excellence: focus on the usability of data visualization and provide learners with precise and valuable information.

• Visual Integrity: representation should neither distort the underlying data nor create a false impression or interpretation of that data.

• Maximizing the Data-Ink Ratio: best utilize space of the actual data representation space and the annotating text; all superfluous elements should be removed in order to reduce the learners’ extraneous cognitive load.

• Aesthetic Elegance: Tufte’s interpretation of aesthetic elegance is not based on the “physical beauty” of an information visualization but rather the simplicity of the design evoking the complexity of the data clearly. Data visualization isn’t really about how pretty and artistic the product is, but rather if the graphic can communicate its information with the readers in a simple and efficient way in all means.

Limitations and future work

I think it is a pretty clear and simple data visualization project that tells its story out in text and data. It would be great to have this topic to be a data-driven story that analyzes the reasons of India’s soaring cases and deaths, in relation to religious events, policy-making, medical resources, vaccination processes, etc., since what India is experiencing isn’t a one-factor situation, and it would possibly affect the rest the world.