Snapminder

Query a Gapminder-style bubble chart for countries that moved in a similar way, by highlighting part of a path or drawing a gesture. During query manipulation, colouring around your pointer reveals where matches can be found, helping to avoid the frustration of fruitless searches.

This video shows early results from a project investigating query mechanisms for time-based data suited to display on a bubble chart, inspired by Gapminder’s “Trendalyzer” visualisation.

We implemented a minimal-function bubble chart using Lively Web and d3, and loaded it up with “health and wealth” data from the Gapminder site. A query language for identifying countries by their movements across the chart over time was built up from a small library of Snap! custom blocks, edited by drag-and-drop in a minimal Snap! environment hosted within Lively Web. Queries can also be built programmatically, in response to the user’s interaction with the chart itself; this demo focuses on that.

This experimental project was suspended when Viewpoints Research Institute wound down its activities in 2017.