The World’s Best Countries is visualisation consisting of line charts, tables and text. One hundred countries are measured against a number of variables, rolled up to five main metrics.
Comparisons are facilitated through various country groupings.

The Data

Five summary variables are shown as line graphs. Each summary variable (except health) has components that can be viewed in the right pane. The derivation of the five variables is provided in reasonable detail. The source data are not available on the Newsweek site but references are given. While direct access to the data would be preferable, it should be possible to reproduce the scores based on the information provided.
For comparison, the countries can be grouped by income (GNI per capital), population or a selection of geographic and political subsets.
The unit level for the data is country and each country has a score on each of the variables. No country aggregation into regions is possible.

Visual Variables

Position is used to show a country’s score in the y direction and rank in the x direction.
Colour is used to distinguish subsets of population or income, in the ‘snake’ lines and in tabular/text. A red/green split is used when comparing two countries, which, while intuitive would not be apparent to colour blind users.
Value is used on mouse hover to show a countries score on each of the main variables at the same time.

Visual Mapping

The data are represented as line charts, tables and text and a less common ‘snake’ graph. This is appropriate given the quantitative nature of the five derived metrics and the categorical ranks. It would be possible to present the data in a single dimension for each metric but is likely to be harder to interpret.

Information Seeking

The visualisation allows users to explore a countries relative performance in a number of areas. For the most part the limited use of colour enhances the visualisation. The specific details in the right hand pane allow for more exact comparisons.

Interaction

This interactive visualization allows the user to change which countries are compared. The contrast on mouse hover is very low and is a little hard to read but making comparisons does not depend on this feature. Hovering over each point on the chart shows the country’s actual score on that metric, and its overall rank in a floating text box.
Clicking on a point brings up detailed information about the country in the right hand pane and creates a snake graph spanning all of the five line charts (in the vertical direction). A second click creates a second ‘snake’ to allow for comparisons between two countries. A hover over a third point allows for the comparison of a third country.
Reasonable instructions are provided on the various features.

Shneiderman’s ‘visual information seeking mantra’ is held to a limited extent as an overview is provided with more detail available on click and hover. Zooming is facilitated but the selection of country sub-groups.

Credit

Newsweek

Interactive design & programming: Thomas Klepl; Creative lead: Adam Clarkson