Now, we focus on possibilities of representation of all this data on a dashboard or interactive software tool.
Figure 1: Sketches for Reviews of Users
My task was to visualize the information about the reviews of users. First, I imagined that the whole dataset including other directions can be merged in a 3D interactive plot. This plot is based on the map of Belgium and the cities with available data are highlighted by a different shadow color. When readers move their mouse in this region, the subwindows with the shape of cities can be presented and give more detailed information.
Second, for the information of users’ reviews, I drew some icons to represent some factors. Those icons are not completely my original work and some of them are referenced from the picture shown on the websites of Google Picture. I revised them and added my personal ideas to it, like using the element of color to represent the values. In detail, in the top-right graph, the icon of thumb up represents the rating score and the level of color refers to the value. The highest rating score may make the icon full of pink. Following the same logic, the broomstick means the cleanness score and the telephone means the communication score. The average number of reviews can be represented by the silhouette of people, more silhouettes, more reviews. The bottom-right plot tries to combine all elements in one graph. In future steps, the map can be zoomed in or out and the information presented on the map can be changed.
Figure 2: Dashboard landing page
As a first page, we shall look at the map of Belgium and highlight the 3 cities we are focusing on for now. On the selection of one of the cities, we move to the individual pages that show city-level aggregates across property type. On selection of property type, we can also find the plots used above to indicate the ratings and reviews on cleanliness, communication, and overall positive ratings. The finer details will come in the following weeks.