Critique of Data Visualization Story

http://www.slow-journalism.com/oscars-infographic

Why did you pick this particular story?: Interest. I'm a big fan of movies and I've watched The Academy Awards every year since 2006 all the way through. Additionally I was trying to think up good data visualization stories to look up and the words "Oscars" went through my mind. I'm sure there are some news articles or blog posts about the academy awards that use data visualization in them. Thankfully I was right.

This particular story was issue 10 of Delayed Gratification (Jan - Mar 2013) and shows what the perfect character choices that lead people to winning are.


What did you like about the project?: It was interesting to look at. As someone who is very familiar with the Academy Awards and the Oscars, its often assumed that the roles that win are generally the most Oscar baitey out roles. Inspirational films, biopics etc... 


This was a pretty good data infograph. According to the sheet 17 to 18% of the people who win an Oscar for having facial hair. This visualization chart also separates categories by color. Orange represents fictional characters, blue represents North American, green represents soldier / lawman, performers, or someone who works in the community, red represents that those who don't partake in sexual scenes, etc... While there is a smaller chart down below each of them that show what types of roles the Oscars don't usually go for, when it comes to the win. More people have won for playing fictional characters, then they have historical ones. Most people who have won Oscars, won it for playing North American characters and not British, Irish or European characters. While interestingly the number of people who have Oscars for playing soldiers / lawman or performers etc... is very similar to those that have won ones for playing monarchs, politicians, housewives, etc.. and that's not many when compared to other types of roles on this list. 

Overall it was a very well done and well researched chart / list and I appreciated it for its information about The Academy Awards, some of which I was not even aware of, and was actually surprised when I learned some of the information from the page.

 What did you dislike about this project: While the chart is nice and well arranged, it can be very confusing at times. The way in which the creators of this data visualization piece have matched their colors with the names and what their roles are supposed to be, at times has made them hard to match, because the colors are directly next to each other in a loop. However when you really start matching the colors with the names, after looking at the sheet a few times, it becomes more apparent which roles belong to each actor and actress. 

Did the visualization tell the story better than another medium would have, such as video or photos or text? - This chart explains what the perfect and most popular character choices are when it comes to winning Oscars. In a way its much more efficient than if this information was written on a text sheet or was shown from a video, as its more simpler and easier to access, getting its point across quite clear. Additionally something like a news article or blog post would write about the information and show an image or two most likely, making it potentially less easy to understand.