How data visualization increases the digital interactions by visualizing trends of Taiwan — Information Visualization

Taiwan Trend 1 (interact with the graph on below link)
What did GDP per capita change among countries in Asia over the past 60 years

Taiwan Trend 2 (interact with the graph on below link)
WHAT COUNTRY’S MOVIE WAS POPULAR IN TAIWAN IN 2017?

Introduction of Taiwan’s Trend in Visualization

Have you ever felt overwhelming after digesting a great amount of information or data? Data visualization is a blooming field that helps to resolve the challenge of understanding and communicating data. As a Taiwanese, I have always noticed the challenges of understanding and communicating about information in Taiwan. If data visualization can help to resolve this problem, it will be very helpful to advance Taiwan’s industries in many ways. However, data visualization technology doesn’t seem ubiquitous because of a lower understanding of this field and people don’t know how to apply this technique to Taiwan’s society. As the result, the Taiwan government and organizations should take data intelligence as one of the major sectors, and apply it to major industries’ developments such as the economic and creative industry, so that industries of Taiwan can be more globally driven. I will apply data visualization technical skills to showcase the trend of the common issues of Taiwan on an educational website so that it can become a good example of showing how data visualization provides more digital interactions and increases effective digital communications. Additionally, the object of this project not only shows a good example to utilize data visualization to increase the digital interactions to the users in Taiwan but also raises the awareness of implementing data visualizations into society in Taiwan.

As the Internet progresses in Taiwan, we don’t live in the world with a lack of information but a huge amount of information. As a result, this has been caused various negative impacts in Taiwan such as low quality of data, the information gap between city and urban area, or misunderstanding of data, so how can we resolve this issue to increase the strength of using information have become more important. Data visualization can meet this challenge because it has the power to transform complicated texts into simple yet aesthetic visual language. Murray (2019) gives the examples that “ …where are the waterways, which boroughs and neighborhoods are next to one another, and which are connected by bridges? All of these details can be seen quite easily by looking at a map. When we use digital maps and data visualizations, we can further interact by zooming in and potentially selecting certain points or areas to investigate further.” A very common example is the Taiwan MRT station map. If a foreign traveler came to Taiwan, and he only receives a word sheet includes a table listed MRT station name. He must spend a lot of time reading all the names on this sheet. Also, he doesn’t know the relationships between a station and a station. If an interactive map replaces this table sheet, it will definitely help users to understand the MRT’s map faster and increase more interaction online. Furthermore, Data visualization share emotions more deeply than texts. According to Murray(2019), “ In order to raise the attention of the viewers, the forms of visual languages such as colors, typography, and layout communicate emotionally than facts and numbers.” In business’s perspective, Microsoft Research Asia (2019) explains that in term of enhancing efficiency communication or more often than not we called it: visual storytelling, data visualization often present inaccurate driven, digestible, and unforgettable facts that helps viewers to understand the results in a precise and concise way. Taiwan has increased the need of using Data visualization to tell an effective and emotional story because I haven’t discovered data visualization ubiquitously in Taiwan, but there are huge misunderstanding gaps of information between organizations and individuals. If the organizations or government can apply data visualization technology in their enterprises, it will be win-win situations among decision-makers and users.

Why/How does data visualization increase online interaction in Taiwan?

Additionally, Taiwan has the potential to apply Data visualization technology into society. One of the best methods is to integrate Data visualization examples into a user interface. Microsoft Research Asia (2019) explains that we often discover data visualizations on interfaces, which means data visualization relies on user interface strongly since it supports in exploring data visualization such as filter, search bar, selective sections. On the other hand, in terms of increasing interaction online, Data visualization also helps to increase the interactions on user interfaces, so that Data visualization and user interface have reciprocal benefits in the digital world.

visualization relies on user interface strongly since it supports in exploring of data visualization such as filter, search bar, selective sections. On the other hand, in terms of increasing interaction online, Data visualization also helps to increase the interactions on user interfaces, so that Data visualization and user interface have reciprocal benefits in the digital world.

Taiwan is well developed in sharing the information on the website, but it is hard to present information via Data visualization technology. For this project, I am going to explore the few Data visualization software to transform the Taiwan trends into interactive visualization works and I will present all these works on an educational website for the audiences in Taiwan. Therefore, data visualization not only increases the interaction but also provides more advanced users in the future.

One important strength that Data visualization provides is its result, which advances the business’s growth. A forecast that Microsoft Research Asia (2019) indicates data visualization has a doable strength that provides precise analysis to guide the strategic actions. The example is such as, in predicting the next quarter sales, the discoveries from the data might suggest the decreased sales to 10 percent of a certain brand. This is useful to make the following business decisions in order to help businesses grow.

Data visualization won’t only exist in a certain commercial enterprise, but also it will become a very common technology integrating into our future’s life. Also, Microsoft Research Asia (2019) mentioned another future trend of integrating visualization that it will transform widespread in our life. Microsoft Research Asia (2019) shows the example of new user-focused interaction that exceeds the original input method such as a signal, digital pen, or touchable experiences will become better developed and popular in the future. In Taiwan, there are several organizations that utilize data visualizations to impact communications internally. If decision-makers start to apply Data visualization methodology not only in internal communication but also in supporting further actions to expanse the enterprises into the next level of scales. More than that, data visualization also has an advantage in reflecting our current social issues more easily in comparison to digest the overload information, and it is able to raise the awareness of society’s issues among every individual. Therefore, I believe it will be definitely beneficial to exploit Data visualization in Taiwan.

Taiwan Trendy Issues — Economic & Creative Industry

There always have discussed how to improve our current industrial conditions in Taiwan. Most industrial discussions have been surrounded by the issues of the economic and creative industries, which are the two major industries that drive the growth of Taiwan. As a result, I want to investigate the trend of issues among these two industries in Taiwan in order to apply the relevant data into the examples of data visualizations. An example I found in the article “ Taiwan Roundtable: From Risk To Opportunity” Fiano (2019) says that “ …60% percent of our GDP is related to exports. In semiconductors, there is still the opportunity for growth because of the demand in areas like 5G for mobile or artificial intelligence. But emerging markets are facing a lot of challenges, and this will reduce the consumption of consumer electronics, which might affect the semiconductor business. My goal for this data visualization is to show the percentage of each industry which contributes to the total growth of our GDP. This visualization not only will increase the economic understanding among viewers in Taiwan but also deliver a general industrial overview for the decision-makers in government or organizations to have the following strategic actions.

Fiano (2019) also mentioned the comparisons of financial market performance of other countries in Asia that “… the financial-market performance relative to other Asian economies: Taiwan lost about 10% year to date [November], but that is probably the lowest among the Asian economies. We saw Korea and Singapore indexes lose about 20% or more, and China down about 30%. And Japan is actually interesting, with 5% growth.”. How we understand our past economic performance of Taiwan to shape the positive future should become an essential focus of Taiwan.

Creative industries’ development is another major industry that impacts the development of Taiwan because creative industry product is represented as soft weapons that influence the cultural view of a country and it can transform into various types of products such as film, media, fashion, art, and tourism. Kawashima (2018) declared one interesting survey result showing the proportion of watching TV among Asia’s cities, which found Shanghai, Manila, and Hong Kong are the top three cities that like to watch their local dramas(over 60%) in comparison to watch other countries TV shows. In comparison to this result, Taipei only has 50% percent of people watching local TV dramas, but a higher percentage (over 50%) watch dramas in the USA and Europe (p.xii). The percentage might have shown the meaning that Taipei has more flexible in accepting other countries' cultures. This gives us a good example that Data visualization plays an important role in transforming these data into a visual story where other viewers understand our current status of creative industry development. For example, in terms of implementing the future’s growth of Taiwan, we not only use Data visualization solutions to involve in these social issues but also digest these results to further implement into strategic actions in the long term.

Users Research & Design Methodology

In the beginning, I want to create a visualization that is more relevant to the audiences in New York. I had a discussion with my friend who works as a UX designer in Taiwan, he indicated the development of data visualization in Taiwan didn’t apply ubiquitously and Taiwanese always discussed how to improve our current industrial status. An idea just popped up in my mind: How might I create visualizations to showcase the truth of these trends for audiences in Taiwan? After I decided to visualize the issues of Taiwan, I started to interview with few people to understand what is the popular issues have been discussed widely in Taiwan. As a result, economic and creative industry development are the two major issues drive Taiwanese’s passion to understand. Furthermore, I can use this project as a good practice to introduce data visualization to Taiwan. (See below graph)

Design Process

Where do I find relevant datasets in Taiwan and other countries in Asia?

Taiwan’s government has built a national dataset website for data analytics and I also found two other national base websites for the economic and film-related datasets. For the GDP comparison, I found the other countries' GDP datasets on the world bank website which are good for have any further analysis. During the cleaning data process, I found it’s hard to combine datasets from two different kinds of excel formats and language which takes a long time for me on this stage. Additionally, I found two interesting datasets regarding the film’s revenue in Taiwan. One indicated Taiwan’s film revenue each month, another indicated the film revenue includes Taiwan’s film and other countries’ films. In my opinion, I thought the second dataset is more interesting to understand the Taiwanese’s preferences via revenue.

After I decided on the datasets, I used online translation software to translate Chinese into English and use Openrefine combined six different GDP excels into the same format. When everything is ready, I started to use Tableau to design two visualizations of Taiwan’s Trends. The reason I chose Tableau to design because it has more options to showcase the trends of the dataset compared to other visualized software we learned in the class and it has more features to design user interactions.

Finding & Users Feedback

During the process I developed a GDP per capita graph, I can gain insights of each country’s economic trend throughout the past 60 years. I found this is very important to understand every up and down of the graphs. For example in 2003, Korea and Singapore increased very rapidly which is the turning year of these countries. Hence, Taiwan also has grown very stable in the past 60 years, but I am curious about the reasons for the changes in Korea and Singapore. Were there any major industrial development or policy implementation before 2003? I realized this graph will give Taiwan’s audience a good insight to learn the lesson from the past and other countries in order to improve for our next step. Same to the film’s revenue, in order to grow an industry into a more advanced stage, the decision-makers should understand what their target audiences' preferences. For example, USA films are very popular for Taiwan’s audience which shows the preferences of Taiwan customers.

After I’ve done the visualizations, I tested both visualizations with two other Taiwan users, a user suggested me to included the percentage of industry in Taiwan which contributed to the total GDP growth or showcase the relationship between GDP per capita and Happiness rate for my next step. Another user suggested me to change the color of the countries and the mobile-friendly to make the graph more clearly too.

What I learned from the test is that there is a variety of Taiwan Trends that wait for me to further explore. If I want to create an educational website that can integrate data visualizations examples into Taiwan, I need to have more visualization examples on it. After I’ve finished this project, I felt it is a very meaningful project for me which can contribute to my home country — Taiwan. Furthermore, I tried to integrate the country's illustrations under the circle such as the below example but I failed. For the next step, I will focus on user interactions and the appearance of the graphs to attract more users to interact with visualizations.

Conclusion

Data visualization is a technology that has various advantages that have been introduced in many aspects of our society such as business, government, media, and technology. The reason why data visualization becomes more important because of the rising demand for simple communication among information and individual. Furthermore, the future trend of data visualization will be utilized in our life even stronger. This semester, I learned many popular Data visualization software such as Tableau, Carto, and Gephi in the information visualization course. During each class, I discovered the power of Data visualization that has been transformed my original thoughts of understanding Data and I want to integrate with my current study — UX design to create an educational data visualization website to showcase the examples of my works. As a Taiwanese, I am enthusiastic about applying the Data visualization technique to create visuals that showcase our current trendy issue of Taiwan. In the future, I hope the discoveries will continuously integrate into many aspects of Taiwanese society and the educational website will become one of the milestones of my Pratt study, which shows the evidence of increasing digital interactions by integrating UX and Data Visualizations.

Reference

Fiano, A. (n.d.). Taiwan Roundtable: From Risk To Opportunity. Retrieved from https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/january-2019/taiwan-roundtable-risk-opportunity

Kawashima, N. (2017). Asian cultural flows: Creative industries, cultural policies, and media. Place of publication not identified: Springer.

Murray, E. (2019, January 28). How Data Visualization Supports Communication.
Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/evamurray/2019/01/28/how-data-visualization-supports-communication/#520e62a92cce

Microsoft Research Asia. (n.d.). The Present and Future of Data Intelligence. Retrieved from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/lab/microsoft-research-asia/articles/the-present-and-future-of-data-intelligence/

Enkhtur, Baljinnyam (2019,April, 11) The forest nations. Retrieved from https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/gallery/forest-nations?gallery=votd&fbclid=IwAR3ML1lgaSV45DrUquAgTeTgGO_qocQEbdzFiV91fwvScSJsz_j-qr4-EvE

Originally published at https://studentwork.prattsi.org on May 11, 2019.