UIUX: Proposal

The Team

Proposal

Poster

Application

Research Paper

PROBLEM & MOTIVATION

DATA SOURCES

Data Set	Data Attributes	Purpose
M450081 - Merchandise Imports By Country/Region, Monthly http://www.tablebuilder.singstat.gov.sg/publicfacing/createDataTable.action?refId=15544	FY Jan 1976 - Aug 2018 119 Countries (inclusive of grouping by 6 Continents)	To understand the import figures distributed across all countries as well as grouped by continents.
M450081 - Merchandise Exports By Country/Region, Monthly http://www.tablebuilder.singstat.gov.sg/publicfacing/createDataTable.action?refId=15337/	FY Jan 1976 - Aug 2018 119 Countries (inclusive of grouping by 6 Continents)	To understand the export figures distributed across all countries as well as grouped by continents.
M060251 - Trade In Services By Services Category, Annual http://www.tablebuilder.singstat.gov.sg/publicfacing/createDataTable.action?refId=12396	FY2000 - FY2017 Total Trade In Services Export of Services / Import of Services	To identify trends and understand the distribution of services by category for both imports and exports.
ASEAN Trade Data https://data.aseanstats.org/trade	FY2004 - FY2017 HS 2-digit Reporter by Singapore Partner by the World	To identify trends and understand the distribution of services by category for both imports and exports within Singapore and may look into ASEAN Countries if applicable.

BACKGROUND SURVEY OF RELATED WORKS

Visualisation	Learning Points
Reference: https://www.singstat.gov.sg/modules/infographics/singapore-international-trade	Use of varying data point sizes(size of circles) to represent the combined import and export value is messy in this diagram because the circles are overlapping each other, making it difficult to visualise. Lack of interactivity to study previous years’ data; graph is static and only shows only 2017 data. Graph shows the degree of trade between Singapore and its top trading partners in terms of its import and export trade volume as well as visually represent the net trade value by using identical axis for import and export, thereby dividing the graph area in 2 equal zones; Net Importers represented by blue area where imports > exports & Net Exporters represented by green area where imports < exports.
Major Trading Partners For Trade in Services, 2016 Reference: https://www.singstat.gov.sg/modules/infographics/singapore-international-trade	Diagram shows exports and imports for top trading partners in services but no information about net trade. Good to have information about change in ranking of top trading partners between current year and year in comparison (2012). Difficult to compare import and export across countries in a given year. Useful in showing change in import and export of trading partners between 2012 and 2016 only. Will be better if data visualisation is interactive and allow user to choose a given year to compare change in exports and imports.
ASEAN Trade in Goods(IMTS) Dashboard Reference: https://data.aseanstats.org/dashboard/imts.hs2	Filters at top row do not apply to all graphs and can be misleading. (e.g Year filter only apply to bar graphs on 2nd row.) Ability to toggle import and export as well as showing both at the same time allow user to observe trend net trade balance with each country and see how exports with other countries fare compare vis-a-vis imports. Too much clutter with multiple data labels in the Intra-Extra ASEAN Trade bar chart. It could be better represented.

VISUALISATION PLAN

Type of Visualization	Detailed Description
Sankey Sample link: http://bl.ocks.org/d3noob/5028304	Sankey Diagrams display flows and their quantities in proportion to one another. The things being connected are called nodes and the connections are called links. It is best used to show a many-to-many mapping between two domains or multiple paths through a set of stages. Sankey is helpful in locating dominant contributions to an overall flow.
Multiple Variable Association Grid Heatmap Sample link: http://bl.ocks.org/josiahdavis/7e488547a6381a365ac9	Heatmap is a graphical representation of data where the individual values in the matrix are represented using colors. It is useful for visualizing variance across multiple variables to display patterns in correlations. Each cell represents a correlation between one and another: one along the horizontal, the other along the vertical axis. The darker the shade of color, the larger the degree of correlation between the two axis.
Sunburst Sample link: https://beta.observablehq.com/@mbostock/d3-sunburst	Sunburst shows the hierarchy through a series of rings, that are sliced for each category node. Rings are sliced and divided based on their hierarchical relationship to the parent. Colour can be used to highlight hierarchal groupings or specific categories.

PROJECT TIMELINE

TECHNOLOGIES

TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

Challenges	Mitigation Plan
Team not proficient in Javascript, especially in D3 Libraries	Attend workshops on D3.js Independent learning & self-research online Peer Learning
Data Cleaning and Transformation	Plan the data cleaning steps properly and work closely as a group to ensure tidy data before coding out the visualisations.
Huge amount of data set causing slow rendering of web page	Research on ways of how to effectively render data Store in database and create cache to prevent slow loading

COMMENTS

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