Peer review

[reikookamoto]

The first principle of effective dashboard design I'd like to bring up is less is more. I appreciated the simplicity of your dashboard. There was an appropriate number of figures on each tab and navigation was possible without excessive scrolling.

The second principle I'd like to mention is aesthetics. I also appreciated the simplicity of the colour palette (white, red, and blue) and how the text was easy to read. You either used a dark font colour on a light background or a light font colour on a dark background. Both were effective choices.

I also have some suggestions to make your dashboard even more effective. With regard to the principle build trust in your analysis, I believe that some elements of your dashboard can be clarified. First, it'd be nice to know where you found the original dataset. Perhaps you could include a link to the source in the header. In addition, it'd be appreciated if you could include more information about the background. What is a hate crime in the US? How are incidents reported? These were some of the questions that crossed my mind and having the answers would allow me to take away more meaningful conclusions from your dashboard. Moreover, with regard to your first tab, I think it'd be effective to define each socioeconomic factor (and the respective indicator) included in the analysis. For example, I didn't know what "unemployment rate (seasonal)" referred to and it was also unclear how income disparity was measured in the choropleth and the scatter plot.

Another principle I'd like to comment on is add a narrative and signposts. Although you included descriptions, I believe that some changes can be made to improve the user experience. In the header, "education" is included in the list of socioeconomic factors but it doesn't appear in your analysis (i.e. not an option in the dropdown menu). For consistency, "education" can be simply removed from the dashboard description. With respect to the description of your scatter plot, I'd be wary of saying that the plot allows the user to see which socioeconomic factor has an impact on hate crime rates. The scatter plot can only visualize correlation not causation. Perhaps it's more precise to write "is related to" instead of "has an impact on" in the description. Also, in the description of the second tab, you claim that large fluctuations in hate crime rates have been observed post-election. As this is a rather bold claim, perhaps you could include links to news articles that support this claim.

I'd like to make one last point about the scatter plot in the first tab. The tooltip could be changed to reflect the x chosen by the user. This change would make the tooltip more consistent with those in the choropleth and the bar charts.

Thank you for letting me provide feedback on your dashboard!