I like the clever way they tell the story. It’s a straightforward series of graphs but the reader has to figure out where to click and what to do, which makes the experience feel more like a voyage of discovery.

Jonathan Falk asks what I think of this animated slideshow by Matthew Klein on “How Americans Die”:

Screen Shot 2014-10-30 at 9.35.59 PM

Please click on the above to see the actual slideshow, as this static image does not do it justice.

What do I think? Here was my reaction:

It is good, but I was thrown off by the very first page because it says that it looks like progress stopped in the mid-1990s, but on the actual graphs, the mortality rate continued to drop after the mid-1990s. Also the x-axis labeling was confusing to me, it took awhile for me to figure out that the numbers for the years are not written at the corresponding places on the axes, and I wasn’t clear on what the units are on the y-axis.

I guess what I’m saying is: I like the clever way they tell the story. It’s a straightforward series of graphs but the reader has to figure out where to click and what to do, which makes the experience feel more like a voyage of discovery. The only thing I didn’t like was some of the execution, in that it’s not always clear what the graphs are exactly saying. It’s a good idea and I could see it as a template for future graphical presentations.

It’s also an interesting example because it’s not just displaying data, it’s also giving a little statistics lesson.

2 thoughts on “I like the clever way they tell the story. It’s a straightforward series of graphs but the reader has to figure out where to click and what to do, which makes the experience feel more like a voyage of discovery.

  1. Pingback: How Americans Die | Ø-blog

  2. Pingback: Shared Stories from This Week: Dec 19, 2014

Leave a Reply to Shared Stories from This Week: Dec 19, 2014 Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *