Visualizing the College Decision Tucker Briggs
Spring 2009 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Project Overview My younger sister is currently in 10th grade and several months ago I was helping her start to think about a preliminary list of colleges that she might be interested in attending. We were working through a college database that I found clunky and difficult to navigate. She could download a list of schools, but could not easily compare their features. I felt that it would be helpful to have a visualization that allowed her to easily use a couple of basic filters and then see the results of her search on a map with visual characteristics used to provide additional information about the schools that matched her criteria.
Visualization Approach
My visualization is broken into three sections.
Section 1: Filters
In the bottom third of the screen, the user can use one of several filters to narrow down the colleges that are highlighted on the map. Filters with fewer possible values are depicted as checkboxes (e.g. region, tier), and schools with 'continuous' possible values have slide filters to allow the user to dynamically select any range of values out of a broad range.
This section also includes a reset button that brings the user back to the original view (all filters checked, maximum number of schools highlighted), and a print results button that allows the user to download their current matches to a tab delimited file for further investigation. The ability to download was based on the fact that I thought most users would want a way to 'save' the results of a search and conduct further research. The inclusion of website links in the download will also facilitate further research.
Section 2: Map
The centerpiece of the visualization is the map. Each college is depicted with a mark, and the mark size, color and shape depend on number of undergraduates, US News Tier, and campus setting (respectively). Shapes were selected based on best practice design principles and colors were selected using the ColorBrewer website. As filters are selected in the bottom section, the number of highlighted schools is reduced, and the map dynamically determines a zoom range and zooms in on the remaining schools. The zoom functionality is interpolator based and was adapted from Ben Fry's 'Zipdecode' program. Schools that are not in focus are still depicted with the same size and shape, but the color is a faded brown that makes the marks blend into the background.
If the user moves their mouse around the map, several different things may happen. If the mouse is over only a single school, the mark turns white and a rollover box appears with that school's name, city and state. If the user clicks at this point, the third section of the screen will turn into an info box with additional details about the chosen school. If the mouse is over multiple schools at once, all the marks turned white, but there is no rollover because it is unclear to the program which school the user is trying to select. If the user clicks at this point, then the schools under the mouse are highlighted, all other schools are faded out, and the view zooms in around the identified schools. At this point, the schools are more spread out, and the same rollover and clicking can be used to select an individual school and see more information.
If the user is finished looking at a single school, but doesn't want to lose the filtering that they have done below, they can click the 'Remove Map Filters' button to go back to the view of all schools that match their current filter selections.
Section 3: Legend / Information Box
The last section is in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
If more than one school is currently highlighted, then this section depicts a legend explaining what the different mark sizes, shapes and colors represent. If only one school is highlighted, this section becomes and information box that provides more detail about the chosen school.