We are in great shape, and our map-based prototype is working beautifully; it uses actual crime data (with some limitations) and Google Map’s API. See a thorough explanation of the visualization’s features, and be sure to check out the prototype at tacomacrime.org.
We’d love to get your feedback! Please leave your comments below.
We are a group of Human-Computer Interaction Master’s students at the University of Michigan’s School of Information in Ann Arbor, MI.
Sang, Katie, Taeho and Jeremy
Jeremy Canfield has recently discovered a deep and abiding love for making data understandable through the art and science of Infoviz. Apart from being the chief data translator and problem identifier, he was a heavy-hitter with a marker in the whiteboard design process. This summer he will be trying his hand as an entrepreneur, as one quarter of a mobile apps start-up funded through RPM Ventures.
Taeho Ko loves shaping users’ experiences with novel interaction design. On this project, he served as the flash action-scriptor, and the graphic designer. He feels excited to be a student again after years of experience as an interaction designer and to be heading to San Francisco this summer for an internship at IDEO.
Sanghyuk Koh (Sang) is interested in RIA development and assitive technology. While doing this project, he was amazed by the magic of the Flash. For the summer, he is going to Oregon and work for the Oregon Department of Transporation. He will be evaluating ODOT’s systems and applications.
Katie McCurdy loves to design intuitive and pleasurable user experiences. On this project, in addition to the work the team did together, she served as client contact, blog updater, question asker, cookie provider, and detail rememberer. She is excited to be heading to San Francisco this summer for an Interaction Design internship at VMware.
We’ve made a lot of progress on our prototype through usability testing and many mock-up refinements. See the whole story of our progress on our mid-fi page; in the meantime, the interactive prototype below shows some of the basic ways users can interact with our visualization.
Use the instructions below to follow the sequence of interactions. It might help to open the prototype in a new window.
Instructions
1) Move Over on the District 1-4
>> highlights the area with red shadow
2) Click on the District 1-4
>> a small black pop-up appears
3) Click on the “Compare” button
>> changed into compare mode
4) Mouse Over on the District 2-4
>> highlights the area with red shadow
5) Click on the District 2-4
>> a compare pop-up appears
6) Click on the “More” Button
>> graph transition & summary view
7) Click “X” button to close the summary view
8) Click on “Population”
9) Click on “Population” again to turn off
>> start again from number 1
Our team presented our paper prototypes and poster last week during the University of Michigan School of Information’s ExpoSition; it was a chance for individual students and student groups to show off the projects they had worked on during the school year. There were lots of fabulous projects, and we were happy to be able to share our ideas and get some feedback.
> Download the big pdf file
We are creating a visualization of the City of Tacoma’s crime data. We will use crime data for the past two years that breaks down crimes by police sector and council district.
Our team is currently doing paper prototype usability testing and otherwise polishing our low-fidelity prototypes. We will begin building a high-fidelity flash prototype in the next week.