Peer feedback

[jkim222383]

Hello Crime-Viz group!

This is John Doe and I'm super excited for my first trip to US! I've been putting off my travel plans until last minute, so I'm glad that you took the troubles to collect the crime data for all these popular cities. With your helpful interactive plots, I can plan my trip in safer neighbourhoods!

Here are what I found most helpful about your app + visualizations:

• I like how intuitive the layout is. The layout makes it immediately obvious to me how the different interactive components affect the visualizations.
• I love that you have provided the trends for the total number of crimes over the years instead of just a single year. This is helpful for me because the latest data available for crimes may not be up-to-date, and seeing the trends over the years gives me a rough idea about how many crimes there may be this year or next year.
• I like that you've placed annotations for the actual numbers on top of the bar charts. This annotation makes it easier for me to know the exact number of specific crimes in a given year: for example, the number of homicide for most cities in a given year is much less than 50, so it would have been difficult for me to know this exact number from the bar chart without this annotation.
• I like the attention to detail in your drop-down menu for selecting city. I noticed your city drop-down menu is linked to the drop-down menu for selecting state. I appreciate this attention to detail and robust design that may prevent subtle bugs down the road (e.g. users should not be able to select Miami in California).

Here are what I think could improve my user experience:

• Having larger title and axis labels would improve my experience as a mobile user. When I checked out the app on my phone, I found it a little difficult to see the title and axis labels without having to zoom in.
• It would be helpful for me to easily compare between different cities. Right now I'm thinking of going to San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Miami, or Honolulu. I would like to choose the city with the lowest crime so I can enjoy my vacation to the fullest with a peace of mind. If there was an easy way for me to compare between different cities (e.g. a way to select multiple cities to visualize a bar chart comparing total number of crimes in the selected cities), that would help me quickly decide which city to visit without having to individually check the total number of crimes for each city.
• Having some direct interactivity in the charts (e.g. mouse-over tool tips, zooming in) would improve my user experience. For example, while the line chart shows the trend for the number of crimes over the years, it's hard to make out the exact number for the total number of crimes in a single year. Right now, the best way for me to estimate the exact number seems to be either (1) estimating the total number of crimes from the line chart or (2) adding up the number of crimes in 4 categories from the bar charts. Being able to mouse over a year in a line chart and see the total number of crimes appear in a tool tip would be helpful for me.

Please let me know if you have any questions or clarifications!