Team Members: Kristi Gable, Shawn Kang, Cathy Cao

Percentage of Renewable Energy Consumption

How has the percentage of renewable energy consumption for the world changed from 1990 to 2014?

Design Rationale

We choose to use a mercator projection map to show each one of the countries. We did this because we are looking at more than two hundred and fifty countries so listing them would be inefficient, and grouping them would leave out more detailed data. The scroll bar to select the year was the best way to show the range of years that are available and is set up like a timeline which helps the viewer follow the natural progression change over time. The legend is on the side. This is shown in a gradient instead of distinct colors so the shades can be compared more easily. The graph is a great way to show that overall there is little change over the years of the percentage of renewable energy from the total energy. We thought about a table to show this because it would give more detail, but it would take longer to see this trend since the viewer would have to look at all the numbers.

Development Process

We started with choosing a subtopic from our environment data. Renewable energy had a lot of data and was interesting to all of us. Together, we chose how to present our main visual, the map. We split up looking for map tutorials, setting up the website for D3 interactions, and looking for geolocation data for each of our countries in the dataset. After the first two and a half hours, we had a map showing on the page and our data connected. Within the following 24 hours, the visualizations were showing in the correct areas and the map was reacting to our scroll bar for years. We also made our graph in this time. It took a few more hours to finish the write up and check our formatting and tweak any other visual aspects.