Wingspan Part II: The Viz
If you missed Part I, I talked about how I picked my topic and the process of how I built my 2023 IronViz Qualifier entry. Catch up here.
Now that you’ve heard about the crazy process of building the viz, let’s take a look at the final product. I got more than 80% of the way to my final vision, though I wish there had been time to put a bird on it. I'm proud of my choice to finish & submit, and I learned a ton during the process (more on this in part III).
Reflections by section follow, originally posted on twitter and expanded below.
The goal of an intro is to make your readers keep reading! I tried to do this about a game that is simultaneously popular (with gamers) and niche (with non-gamers) by providing some context, sneaking more in with the show/hide text, and introducing a David-vs-Goliath subplot. Who doesn’t have a friend who’s obnoxiously good at something, yet nice enough that you keep hanging out and doing that thing together? If I had it to do over I might back off to 11 point text to lessen the overall impact of the wall of text.
The “Game KPIs” were added in the revision. I think they break up the text nicely and give a quick overview of the game (and the goal - to win!).
The "How to Play" highlights how I leaned into combining quantitative and qualitative information this year. I chose font size for accessibility, and this amplified the impact. This is a wordy viz. I tried to keep the text concise but there was a lot of 'splaining to do. Could I have skipped teaching a reader how to play? Yes. But I felt like the analysis would have more payoff if you understood how the nuance of strategies is everything to mastering the game.
"Getting Started I: the Player Mat" I made a bunch of mini data sets to help explain the game. My comfort in creating vizzable data is way higher than last year! Thanks mostly to the chance to curate prompts for #B2VB. I also love tooltips. I rarely turn them off and often use them to add interpretation to a mark or to answer the first follow up question you might have on a chart. In this case, I used it to clarify increasing egg costs/power strengths when you play birds in each square.
In this case, I also thought it would be faster to build the chart using a data table than to draw it out!
"Getting Started II: Bonus Cards" I am really happy with this section. The data set I found wasn't structured in a way that was easy to show which birds went with which goals, so I focused on making it easy to browse the cards instead.
"Getting Started III: Goals" I definitely left analysis on the table here - some goal combos are definitely easier/more fun to play than others and I didn't show why. However, I'm satisfied that I explained it clearly & happy with the choice to stick to the core game tiles.
"Getting Started IV: Birds" This was really hard to do without using the actual game art. I wish I'd drawn out a "blank" game card to float the variables over (and checked my filters). But I'm glad I included the scientific names and fun facts in the viz for any birders.
"How to Win" phew, finally through "getting started." Was stoked when I realized that the save games would actually come in handy. Wish I'd spent another beat on scoring - I had breakdown pts by category ready to go for a subset of games and ran out of time.
"Birds Eat Food" almost got axed and was an 11th hour build. Literally. I could use a brush up on my scatterplot skills and food cost vs wingspan was the one tooltip that escaped in default format (There's always one!). But we're starting to get into "real" analysis here.
"Birds (Mostly) Make Nests" is my favorite part of the viz. It was the first set of charts I made for the build and got me excited about working with this data. It's the first packed bubble chart I've made, I'm happy with the nest colors and delighted with the insights.
"Birds Live in Different Habitats" is my runner up fave. Wish the native custom palettes let you start somewhere other than white/grey (yes I know about .tps) & the stats prof living rent free in my head is mad that I reported avg pts vs. running a regression. Oh well.
Finally, "Bird Powers!" Really, this is worth a whole viz on its own now that you know how to play. I've got more strategy instincts to explore, like wetland birds that let you gain food are top tier, predator/birdfeeder actions are terrible, etc.
Last but not least, ALL THE POWERS. I love these tooltips the best of all. And I want to come back and explore this section myself. You know the advice, build the tool you want to use. Done, and done.
See you next time for Part III, where I’ll share some final reflections.
