Data Physicalization of World Happiness

This past spring semester, for Danielle Szafir's Information Visualization final project, our group decided to make a data physicalization of world happiness data. This interactive sculpture visualized and allowed viewers to explore data from the 2016 World Happiness Report, which ranked 156 countries by their happiness. Happiness scores were determined by surveys collected about individual's life satisfaction in relation to other factors such as health and income. 

We decided to use a somewhat traditional form of an ordered bar graph to indicate the overall happiness score for each represented country. The interactivity came by selecting or de-selecting regions of the world (by pressing that region) and in doing so activating or deactivating the lights for those countries. In that way a viewer could narrow down the region of the world they were most interested in by deselecting other regions of the world. Additionally, factors affecting a countries happiness could be examined by pressing attribute buttons for GDP per capita, family, life expectancy, freedom, government trust, or generosity. When the attribute factors were pressed (only one could be selected at a time) then the map showed a color scale of high (orange) to low (blue) for that countries ranking of that attribute. The video below shows how this visualization could be used.

It was an all hands on deck type of project using all of our skills and talents to pull together such a large artifact! The project consisted of over 300 individually addressable LEDs and 18 micro:bit microcontrollers, along with a massive 4'x8' sheet of particle board with a CNC engraved and cut map of the world. Every bar for each country was individually cut, had lights glued inside and was papered over the outside with a label so it would glow when selected. Here are some pictures of our process.

The project went through many rounds of design before we settled on the map and bar structure - from human sized bars you could crawl on to a game of sliders where you physically moved the happiness bars of each country until you got them all correct. But even once the format was decided upon, programming the LEDs and getting the interactivity went through several iterations. The video below shows the programming structure of how the buttons worked in the final format, however at this point we thought we were going to use brightness for the amount of each attribute and color for the different attributes. We found (as you will see in the video) that the brightness was too hard for our eyes to distinguish, so we went with a color scale in the final product. This video does show how the 18 devices communicated and interacted with one another.

The group consisted of Matilda Whitemore, Ben Galassi, Daniel Frost, Adam Siefkas, and Lila Finch. In the time lapse video below you can see us working through the night and into the morning to get the table constructed.

Although the map had a long life in the ATLAS lobby, it has just been deconstructed and its parts cannibalized to be reused in new projects!