Assignment: Journey Map

Maps not only convey space, they provide a context for story-telling. In this assignment, you should map any journey involving movement through physical space, personal or not. The journey could be a daily commute, a long-distance trip, moving patterns over years, or something from history. The key is to map movement from one place to another.

Assignment Description

Your task is to design a single visualization for your chosen journey. We expect most submissions will involve a static representation, but you are free to “skip ahead” and experiment with interactive or animated elements if you like. Journeys might be conveyed using geographic data and a map projection, but you are also free to explore other ways to show movement through space.

In addition to your visualization, you must provide a short write-up that describes the journey you sought to visualize, your data source(s), and a short (1 paragraph) design rationale justifying your data transformation and visual encoding choices.

Grading

We will determine scores by judging how the visualization conveys the journey, the individual design details, and the content of your write-up. For example:

• Is the trajectory and progression of the journey clear?
• Is a notion of place (whether using cartographic projections or not) effectively conveyed?
• Are expressive and effective visual encodings applied?
• Does the write-up provide sufficient description and reasoned rationales?

Submission Details

This is an individual assignment. You may not work in groups. Submit your assignment by completing this page and publishing it to your GitLab repository. The rendered page should be viewable on your GitLab pages site. Second, you must submit a URL on Gradescope that links to your published journey map page on GitLab pages.

Acknowledgements

The design of this assignment was inspired by the 30 Day Map Challenge, specifically the day 5 challenge issued for May 11, 2024.

Journey Map

const usa = vega_datasets['us-10m.json']()

const unemp = vega_datasets['unemployment.tsv'].url

Write Up

This interactive visualization presents annual percentage changes in population and unemployment rates across U.S. counties from 2011 to 2017, allowing users to select specific years to observe county-level shifts compared to the previous year. Utilizing data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it features two choropleth maps with diverging blue-orange color schemes to indicate positive and negative changes. Distinct legend quantization ranges were employed for each map—[-5%, 5%] for population changes and [-2.5%, 2.5%] for unemployment rate changes—to better represent the unique distributions of each dataset, as population changes typically exhibit broader variations across counties, while unemployment rate changes tend to be more constrained. An interactive slider enables year selection, dynamically updating the maps to reflect temporal trends, while the Albers USA projection ensures accurate geographical representation. This design facilitates an intuitive exploration of regional demographic and economic patterns during the post-recession recovery period.