2015 NCAA Major Football Programs’ Reported Concussions

http://arcg.is/1WcLTVu

3 Responses to "2015 NCAA Major Football Programs’ Reported Concussions"

Matthew Celona says:

April 19, 2016 at 11:11 am

Map Comments:

1. I know that I am looking at a map of concussions in the most recent year of NCAA football across the U.S. My only comment would be that there are so many schools that reported concussions, it is hard to tell which schools are reporting without clicking on the point. Also, many of the points overlap because there are so many points and you have to zoom in very close in certain locations just to see the separation between the points. Maybe focusing on one of the major conferences alone (i.e. SEC) would have been a little better in terms of seeing more of the points.

2. The map projection looks great to me.

3. I think the map could have been better if it were created at a few different scales. For example, I think that it would have looked good if when you clicked on a point on the map, the map zoomed in to that specific point to show the NCAA school on a larger scale. But I think starting the map out on a smaller scale to cover the entire country was the right way to start it.

4. The symbology is kind of confusing. Even though a legend is provided that labels each individual school, many of the same colors are used more than once, so multiple schools are represented by the same color label on the map. I think that it could have been a little better if you split teams up by conference and gave each conference a specific color to label the school points by on the map.

5. The map is showing qualitative data. I think that smaller points on the map could have been used to avoid some of the overlapping points. Since there are so many schools being represented on the map, using smaller point labels could have helped with the overlap.

6. The title and brief description of the map are clear, however, it is not clear what significance the color of each point has. I think that providing a smaller legend that specified the meaning of each color label would have been good.

7. The map could have slightly more figure-ground organization if there was a little better organization to the colors of the points. I understand that I am looking at NCAA schools across the U.S. but I think I would have better understood the map if the colors carried a bit more meaning (i.e. colors representing conference).

8. A better visual hierarchy could have been created if the map zoomed into a point when you clicked on it.

9. I think possibly focusing on one of the main conferences in the NCAA, such as the SEC or Big 12, would allow you to provide more detail to the map and take away some of the confusing colors.
Thys Northup says:

April 19, 2016 at 11:49 am

1. Story you want to tell is clearly about reported college football concussions in 2015 like you say. But I feel that the story might be better told with a different format. Just an initial impression is that there are a lot of points and it’s a little difficult to tell whats going on.

2. Projection is perfect as far as I can tell

3. It might help to have points labeled as you zoom in. So on a state level it’d be possible to see the points labeled with the name of the college.

4. I think the legend is kinda difficult to understand with a lot of colors being the same for different colleges. What might be good, since there are a limited number of colors is to have the points colored according the the severity of the concussion. Whether the player missed any games. Though that’s definitely gonna end up having more points, if there is a smaller sample size it might provide an interesting picture. It also might be interesting to include points of major colleges that have reported no concussions, if there are any.

5. The symbols are great for drawing attention to the points though a smaller size might help with overlap at a greater scale.

6. The text symbols are clear for their representation

7. The base map doesn’t draw attention away from the points and provides a clear overview of the layout.

8. Visual hierarchy is a but confusing with multiple schools with the same colors.

9. Having a story map take you through different regions or different states might make it easier to understand and take in all the data, because there is a lot.
Kimberley Browne says:

April 20, 2016 at 9:12 am

I agree with Matthew that the points would be more interesting if you could zoom into them when you clicked on them. The colors don’t make sense for the points.

Perhaps aggregate these up to states or regions and then have clickable incidents?

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