The data set that I have chosen to work with is about global plastic production and plastic waste. I chose to focus on the data that shows how much plastic is produced by the industrial sector and how much of the produced plastic actually went to waste in 2015.
While there are other data sets provided on plastic production and waste, I chose this particular data set as I wanted to communicate how much unnecessary plastic is being used because the data set does show that the majority of the plastic that is produced actually goes to waste and is not used for the long term. I wanted the viewer to see the scale of how much is being wasted through the comparison being showed in the bar charts.
Original data source
I chose to use red and blue as they are easily distinguishable as two different elements and I wanted to show both plastic production and plastic waste. I also chose to use a bar chart over a donut chart as a donut chart would have too many colours and it might look too messy on the page. I also wouldn’t really be able to show both plastic production and waste on one donut chart. I also chose to use bottles because bottles are easily identifiable with plastic. I wanted to show the scale of what is being wasted through the few blue bottles, which represents the used plastic, among a sea of wasted plastic which are the red bottles. By allowing the viewer to zoom in and out, they can look at the bigger picture and scale.
Some of the issues I encountered was being unable to showcase the comparison through using a donut graph and I got around it by making a different type of chart instead. I also faced an issue with the bottle sketch as it was quite heavy so I reduced the vertex count on the bottle. I also struggled with amount of information to put in the chart as I didn’t want to overwhelm the viewer, so I tested different amount of elements on the screen and removed what I felt could be removed.
I got both positive and negative feedback when showing my original sketches to my peers, while they said that the 2 coloured bar is clear and the bar chart is clear, but there were values lacking as I only had the overall value at the bottom. So I added a mouseover to show the numbers for each sector. The bottle sketch was interesting but the feedback I got was that I could add more bottles to make it more obvious and to show the scale of the numbers.
I was quite happy when I showed the latest version of the sketch to my peers and they said that it was clear and they understood what I was trying to show with the graph and I was also was happy that I was able to achieve the 3D sketch that I set out to do, as I wanted to try something 3D and move away from 2d sketches.
This is how the bar chart looked like initially, but the rotated title made it confusing.
This is the initial exploration of how the donut graph would look like as I wanted to do a donut graph at first.
I tried using various thickness for different sections of the donut graph.
Initial idea of using the plastic bottle 3D model, but I decided not to do this because it is not clear.
Instead of sea of bottles, I wanted to do a cube made up of bottles instead, reflecting the cubes of compressed waste found in junkyards.