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aayushch t1_j8dff9z wrote

Reply to comment by cjrmartin in [OC] %age of area covered by forests in Indian states by BlitzOrion

I still stand by my comment, that it is indeed frustrating and misleading and not a very good use of colours. However, I acknowledge that you did spend time on gathering this data and then charting it out and it takes effort and time for it, so I really do appreciate your work here. I also admit that I should have left more details so here you go:

  • The “%age” is misleading because it is ambiguous, that is, if you are referring to it as “percentage” or the “age” of the areas. A reader will have to read it multiple times and look at the legend to correlate what you intend to depict. Hence misleading and frustrating. A chart/visualisation loses value if it’s not intuitive. Drop the “age”
  • The use of colours is incorrect for two reasons. First it uses the same gradient all over. This is going to be an accessibility issue. Think about people who have colour blindness. They won’t be able to read your visualisation. There are tools online which help you see image/colours in different types of colour blindness modes. Use them to make your visualisation more accessible. Second, the choice of colour green as a context for areas which do not have any forests in them is misleading. Use of different shades of colours can depict “presence” or “absence” of data points on your visualisation and may help to make the legend self explanatory which enhances your chart.

I hope this helps.

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cjrmartin t1_j8ewead wrote

I disagree with you (especially on the colour point), but at least you took the time to make your points constructive. Too many people were just saying "you did the worst job possible" and that is not a helpful way to give feedback.

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aayushch t1_j8grrjp wrote

Sure, you can choose to disagree, however, I work with UIs and I am pretty sure that everywhere in the industry this colour gradient will be flagged for accessibility issues.

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cjrmartin t1_j8hi5ht wrote

I'm not sure you are correct. I work with GIS (academic not commercial or accessibility related to be fair) but normally the issue with green and shades of green is when it's in contrast with a red or orange shade. That's when colour blind issues come into play.

If this were purely greyscale, you would be able to see each tone fine (although could be tweaked to increase contrast eg lighter green to start and bigger steps) which is the quick test for colourblind problems.

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