Change We Can Visualize

After weeks of top-secret research and development, the Change We Can Visualize team is ready to release two lo-fi prototypes. They are both scatter plots, relying on the position, size, and color of each point to relay information to the viewer.

All of Congress, One Interest Group

The first one shows each member of congress (or a subset thereof) on a set of axes that show the dollar amount of contributions from a particular special interest group and the percentage of bills that each congressperson voted in alignment with the preferences of the interest group in question. Although it ignores the question of causation, when real data are plotted we hope to show that donations from an interest group and alignment with that interest group are positively correlated.

The size of the point is proportional to the number of bills a congressperson voted on that the interest group has a stance on. If the point is larger, the correlation (or lack thereof) may be considered stronger. Without actual data, it is hard to know whether the numbers of votes differ substantially enough to warrant different sized points, so this may change in the future. Color simply indicates party affiliation.

When a point is clicked, a balloon pops up that visualizes the party allegiance of the congressperson in question for the votes opined upon by the selected interest group.

One Member of Congress, All Interest Groups

The second scatter plot we developed retains the same axes, percent alignment with an interest group and dollars contributed from an interest group, but instead of showing all members of congress and one interest group, we show all interest groups for one member of congress. This allows the viewer to see which interests hold the most sway over their congressperson. The color of each point represents industry group, and size represents the number of bills that group is interested in.

The balloon for each interest group will show a grid of bills for that interest group and use color to indicate whether the selected member of congress voting with, or in opposition to, the interest group.

Process

To develop our prototype visualizations, we first made a list of all variables we may want to consider.

While looking at the list, we discussed what types of relationships we might want to show. The key relationship, we decided, is the relationship between between the size of political donations from special interest groups and the voting record of the recipients of the donations.

Watchdog.net conveniently provides a metric called Interest Group Alignment, which is the percentage of votes on which a particular congress member voted in agreement with an interest group, which we knew immediately we wanted to include in at least one of our prototypes.

With these specifications in mind, we each sketched 2–3 prototypes on our own, some of which are show below.

We reconvened to discuss each others’ sketches. Two of the prototype sketches, from two different people, were basic versions of the two plots shown above. The smaller visualizations in the bubbles also started out as individual sketches.

Once the final ideas for the prototypes were solidified on whiteboards, we turned to OmniGraffle to create the higher fidelity versions shown earlier.