Milestone 2: Marshall Crime App Review

[topspinj]

General comments:

• The user experience of this app feels more like a web app than a standalone visualization app. You can click on 4 tabs in the header to see different views (geographical map, scatter plot, table), and you can download city-specific crime data. After testing out the app, it seems like the main purpose of the app is to investigate general crime trends across major cities in the U.S.
• The colours were user-friendly, and accessible for those who are colourblind.
• The app had many components to it, but was well thought-out in its design and overall flow.

Could improve:

• The app has a lot of text, and instructions on how to navigate through the app. Some users (including myself) may be lazy and skip over text. For example, in the Map view, I didn’t realize that I could click on the bubbles to retrieve more information about crime in that particular city. I learned afterwards that the side panel had instructions on how to click the bubbles. A couple of suggestions: 1) increase font size of instruction, or 2) make interaction more intuitive - could show information directly on hover, rather than having to click it.
• Aesthetic mapping of the bubbles on Map view is confusing. As a user, we’re trying to juggle between interpreting the size of bubble and colour of the bubble. Adding a legend to explain what size and colour represent could help solve this.
• Slider for adjusting year in Map view is misleading. When you slide the circle to the right, the growing blue line suggests that the map represents data for a range of years rather than a specific year. One suggestion is to remove this blue line from the slider (if possible), or change the input widget to a radio button or dropdown.
• Trends view: The side panel has text indicating the scale of the plot’s y-axis (100k/city), but it’s not obvious. I suggest adding this to the main panel, or even incorporating it into your app (e.g., update y-axis to say '# crimes per 100k people'.

[topspinj]

Note: I used Sim-Daltonism to check for colorblind accessibility. A similar web-based version can be found here.