A picture of health

This was a really enjoyable (if exhausting) project to work on. The brief? To expand on a traditional "pharmaceutical transport" diagram - which shows what happens to drugs we use once we have consumed or disposed of them. We ended up creating the information graphic above, which is intended to reveal to the viewer their own place in a complex system - with many loops, feedbacks and choices to be made.. I was working with two colleagues at the University of Exeter / University of Plymouth - Dr Clare Redshaw, an environmental chemist, and Dr Mat White, a behavioural psychologist. We wanted to expand a "traditional" pharmaceutical transport diagram (from Petrović et al. 2003), and perhaps work towards an academic paper on the subject. These diagrams normally start with what happens when we dispose of the pharmaceutical products that we use every day. As you can see from our scrawled annotations, we wanted to include what happens "upstream" of this poin...

It's always nice when one of my colleagues approaches me with some data they're really excited about. In this case it was Dr Ben Wheeler, who had been analysing UK census data, and found a relationship between how close people live to the coast and their self-reported quality of health. It fell to me to try and present the relationship he had found visually - and in a very small space, for publication in a scientific journal. I can talk about the development process now, as the paper has recently been published: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353829212001220 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18856680 I knew from the outset that I wanted the resulting figure to look authoritative, given the context of use in a scientific journal. It of course needed to communicate the results accurately and clearly, but I also wanted it to quickly reveal to the reader what the data points were showing them. This is what I had to work with - two bar charts, som...

In honour of the Annual Information is Beautiful Awards ( http://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/ ) I've been encouraged to do some more work on my seasonal food calendar. I've made a new version for the competition, which has two wheels - one for fruit and vegetables, and one for seafood and game. I've mounted the prints of these on custom-built wooden cogs, so that I can turn them at the same speed simultaneously, making a really pleasing wood-on-wood sound as well! I've also made a short (~3 min) video explaining the project: You can download a PDF of each of the calendars too - feel free to print them out and have a go with them: Fruit and vegetables calendar Game and seafood calendar I'd welcome any comments or feedback from you if you use them. What works for you? What could be better? What should I make an information graphic about next? Ideas involving environment / health data particularly welcome :)

My PhD thesis, entitled Information Graphics in Health Technology Assessment has been accepted by the Peninsula Medical School (Universities of Exeter and Plymouth). If you have a spare few weeks to read it, it's available here: http://sites.pcmd.ac.uk/infographics/thesis/index.php If you don't have a few spare weeks, and you just want to see a few pretty information graphics, just read Chapter 1.1. If you're really into information graphics, the beginning of Chapter 4 might be of interest too, and perhaps the design process model I use (Chapter 2.2 for that). If you're an HTA researcher, you need to read the whole thing. Oh, okay, if you're really short on time, skip to the two prototype tests. Have a look at the introduction and conclusion (particularly the "future development of graphic" sections of these). Also the Discussion Chapter (7) might be a good bet. Enjoy!

I've been designing some symbols recently to represent the 12 "atmospheric services" - the things that the air around us provides us with, which we don't always think about (or value properly). More information graphics to come based on these symbols - but they'll have to wait until the paper on the subject is published... More information on the concept of Atmospheric Services in my previous post explaining the atmospheric column: http://blog.willstahl.com/2011/05/atmospheric-services.html Also, see the following paper that explains the ideas in more depth: Thornes J., Bloss, W., Bouzarovski, S. et al. (2010). Communicating the value of atmospheric services. Meteorological Applications, DOI: 10.1002/met.200

Well, in honour of my sketch being shortlisted for the first Information is Beautiful challenge (see last post), I felt I had to work the idea up properly. I really enjoyed working with the isometric perspective, which I haven't tried before. I think in this case the pseudo-3D perspective does make it hard to see the exact relationship between the different resources. A 2D bar chart would have done this better, but the isometric perspective idea does show groupings on the periodic table as well as giving a general idea of resource levels remaining. I found that it was essential to label the elements on the table as well as at the end of the 'bars', so that you can get some definite sense of the bar length by comparing the two positions.

I'm very honoured to have been shortlisted for the first ever Information is Beautiful challenge - which involves visualising the worldwide reserves of different materials. I wish I'd been able to work up a full piece for it, but sadly I only found out about the competition 2 hours before the deadline! So I entered the "napkin challenge" - for sketches and roughs. There are loads of great ideas up there, so obviously a great success for McCandless and the IB team: http://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/2011/10/napkin-shortlist-for-the-1st-challenge/ I guess I'd better produce the full version too now I have more leisure to do so!