“Arab Women in Research” Data Story through an Eye of a Critic
Al-Fanar Media published two years ago a data story about Arab women in research, in collaboration, with Infotimes. This story highlights that Arab female researchers are more than males, however, the graphical representation and the design structure could have been more appealing.
Starting from the headline, it is specific and the keywords are there. Under the headline comes a photo that shows a woman working in a laboratory and reflects the headline topic, but it is without credits and a caption. The lead is short and straight to the point, however, adding more main points about the angle of the story would be enriching.
The story contains three types of data visualizations and has the same data source in common which is the “Unesco Institute for Statistics Database”. It would have been more insightful if there were diversity from data sources. The data visualization tool used for the first two charts is “tableau”, however, we notice that the data source is written differently in each chart. But the third chart doesn’t show what is the tool used. Also, the headlines of the three charts lack consistency in terms of font size, yet the third chart isn’t orderly aligned like the first two one.
Nevertheless, the first graph shows the Arab world map since the study is targeting women who work in research in the Arab world. The map position is centered where dark colors are used for high values and light colors were used for lower values, however, labeling the countries would help the audience understand easier the context. This map doesn’t need a legend since the data variable is clear and highlighted through the geographical areas.
Below is the recreation of the map where geographical areas are labeled.
Moving to the second graph, a 3D pie chart shows the number of female researchers in a given field. In her book “Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals”, author Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic describes pie charts as evils. She considers that reading it might tilt the understanding of the numbers. Although the data labels are written here, it’s difficult to compare the chart segments’ sizes. The highlighting of the values for each segment could be made the chart more readable. Also, we realize that each country has a different chart in terms of scale. The color scheme doesn’t look catchy and needs more to be saturated. The data is clean and no complexity is there.
Alternatively, creating a horizontal stacked bar chart gives meaning to each data entity and looks clearer.
In the third chart, although it is simple and it shows categorical data, and the context is important since it shows the top countries that have women working in research, however, the bar chart doesn’t look attractive. Also, the data percentage should have been labeled on the chart and highlighted to draw attention and the used color is vibrant since there aren’t many variables.
Instead, this data could be recreated more as a visual text makeover using pictograph showing the top three countries for women in research along with its percentage, especially that some of the countries were mentioned in the map above.
Besides, ending the story with a quote looks cliché. Yet, the story is balanced and properly written and the style of writing is concise and easy to read.
