Interactive visualization showing how different cities searched to find out what happened in Brussels on Mar 22, 2016
This interactive infographic shows the speed of news about four different terrorist attacks spreading from the time each attack happened to the time the news reached each of 13 large cities around the world.
#The Clock Analogy The visual analogy is built around a clock that is a familiar interface for virtually all possible readers of this graphic. Most cities received the news within the first 3 hours - this is emphasized by the exploded pie chart, “exploding” a quarter of the chart. Where the news took more than 12 hours to reach a city, the time is shown as a spiral winding another circle around the clock.
#The Interface Interactive elements are at the bottom of the graphic because on mobile devices the bottom third of the screen is easy to reach with the thumbs. On desktop the interface mirrors the mobile interface as closely as possible to preserve the integrity of experience for people who view the graphic on different devices. The tap-ability of the cities is suggested with the transparency around the edges of the circles.
#The Meaning of Charts The top chart shows the spearing of the news about the Brussels attacks. Once each city receives the news, a faint version of the connectors continues on until it gathers into a bunch and then splits up by city again revealing the questions each city asked on tap, or on click, The other 3 charts show only the time when the news arrived.
#The Interaction On tap, or click on desktop, the timestamp for all four attacks appear by city. At the same time, only questions for the Brussels attacks appear. This is by design since there is no data about what questions were asked about the other attacks.
#The Color Scheme Terror attacks invoke darkness and sadness. Therefore, the dark background color. Still, as the world tries to comprehend why they happen, there is hope. The saturated colors of cities and connectors represent the connectedness of our world today. A connected people are perhaps a more enlightened people.