What Does 1GB of Mobile Data Cost By Country?
Community Challenge Makeover Monday 2021 Week 19:
My redesign (Tableau File Here):
Original Visualization:
Reading time: 2 min 52 secs
Discussion
Connecting to the internet via Mobile Data is critical today. The higher the cost, the more significant the barrier it is for people to improve themselves and enhance their lives. India has the lowest price per 1 GB due to high competitiveness among multiple carriers. The higher cost tends to be driven either by limited competition or limited infrastructure. Data from the Visual Capitalist provided the cost per 1 GB for 155 different countries is the Makeover Monday 2021 Week 19 challenge (What Does 1 GB of Mobile Data Cost in Every Country?)— combining that data with information on World Bank Region and Income Group Classification.
Goals
Provide an overview of the cost per 1GB per country
Design a viz using country flags as the data points
Present the data removing the cluster so it is easier to view the countries
Complete the challenge in less than 40 minutes to prep for tableau certification
Have the viz tell the story while keeping the design minimal
“The mobile device has become our communications hub, our diary, our entertainment portal, our primary source of media consumption, our wallet and our gateway to real-time information tailored to our needs. The revolution is now!”
Project Discussion
Challenges
I wanted to do a viz with country flags for a while but did not have a reason to figure out the how-to. My standing goal for doing the Makeover Monday Challenge series is to prep for Tableau Certification. This makes the primary goal to finish a viz in a limited time to match the limited time one would find during a certification exam. I will admit that it took me ALOT longer than my time limit to complete this design. Looking for a complete set of creative commons flag png files took time. I used emcrisostomo Github repository of 249 countries flags as creative commons (https://github.com/emcrisostomo/flags). I was not able to find flag png files in the shape of a circle as creative commons. In the future, I will make my own. I now have a complete global set of nation's flags rectangle shape, more countries than the dataset contained. For the project, I copied just the 155 countries in the dataset into a custom shapefile. I also confirmed that the files in the shapefile were in the same sort order as the png files. The data set just listed country names and did not include the ISO 2 Letter or 3 Letter codes. For this reason, I was not sure which country they were referring to as Congo. I did a google search to determine which of the two countries with Congo in the name is typically referred to as Congo.
Design Discussion
Typically with Makeover Monday, I try not to reproduce the original file. Since I wanted to do a viz with country flags, I decided to do something similar to the example viz. One change that I want to make is to remove the data clustering since that makes it challenging to identify each country. I achieved this by doing two things. First, I made the Y-axis exponential. This adjustment to the axis helps to spread out the flags. The second thing I did was I added random() to the x-axis to spread the countries out. I also added the two groupings from the World Bank - Region and Income Group. These grouping will allow the viewer to compare countries from similar geographic regions and economic levels by using filters. I added the ability to highlight a country, just in case someone is interested in a specific country but is not familiar with the country's flag. I included a descriptive text to give the viz a bit of storytelling and supporting information. One drawback of the filter and using random() command, it is more challenging to add fixed annotations.
Final Thoughts
I am happy to be able to do a country flag viz, so I have everything set up for a future viz. I do not think I would have taken the time to do this without this challenge. I see I am able to do the actual viz quicker, overall. I feel I need to work on my visual storytelling; I do see it getting better, but it is an area to improve. I do believe if I gave myself the additional time for completing the viz, this component of my design would improve.
What do you think? Let me know on Twitter @YvonFitz.
Links & Additional Information
Challenge Information
Original Article: What Does 1GB of Mobile Data Cost in Every Country?
Data Source: Visual Capitalist
Challenge Link: Makeover Monday 2021 wk 19
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