40years of Ebola: Visualizing Ebola virus historical timeline
By: Prince Owusu Attah
Tags: UX Research, Data Visualization, Data Science, Data Storytelling

https://images.app.goo.gl/fSpE2aY6Gm6Gitun7

Project Overview

As part of our data visualization semester project, I designed the Ebola virus's historical timeline, exhibited at the Purdue Univesity’s Data Visualization Exhibition. The visualization was selected as one of two works that would be developed as a standard tool.

Timeline— 4 weeks (December 2018)

Team — Prince Owusu Attah, Apurva Nagarajan

My Role (Individual)

→Problem framing

→Data sourcing and analysis

→ Multiple rounds of ideation and sketching

→ Encoding and Visual design

→Testing and evaluation

→ Video for storytelling

My Role (with Apurva)

→Design handoff through zeplin

→HTML Markups

→ Maintaining Git collaboration on Github.

→ Design QAs

Background

The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is a rare viral disease transmitted to humans through contact or bodily fluids. It was originally observed in the then Zaire, now, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1976. The virus is believed to spread through bats and bush meat. In 2014, there was an outbreak in several countries in West Africa, which killed tens of thousands of people. Since August of 2018, there is a new EVD outbreak in Congo. The continuous and wild spread has drawn worldwide attention from medical professionals to governments at different levels. As a result of this, I understood this virus's historical trend and its effects worldwide.

Understanding the virus

The Ebola virus is one of the deadliest viral diseases. EVD most commonly affects people and nonhuman primates (such as monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees). The genus Ebolavirus has several strains, including:

Sudan virus (species Sudan ebolavirus)

Taï Forest virus (species Taï Forest ebolavirus, formerly Côte d’Ivoire ebolavirus)

Bundibugyo virus (species Bundibugyo ebolavirus)

Reston virus (species Reston ebolavirus)

Bombali virus (species Bombali ebolavirus)

Research

I conducted a literature review to understand the virus, existing visualization, and how sensitive medical data is visualized. After that, I identified my data sources from the Center for Disease Control [CDC]. The data was directly derived from the CDC website on the Ebola virus. The website is updated constantly and also feeds the visualization in real-time. The data was initially extracted and populated to identify the relevant information the user would want to understand.

Data Analysis

The data consists of the year of the outbreak, reported number of cases, deaths, survival, country, and Ebola species. The core feature was the timeline, which was generated from the year of the outbreak. The sub features were viral attributes, which described the element. The location was relevant in showing the country of the outbreak.

Viral attributes on a timeline must be linked to the location and depict death and survival rate.

Sketching & Ideation

During the ideation and brainstorming stage, I explored several options for visualization timelines, health, and disease, etc. With the general public as the audience, my goal was to present a visualization that was easy to understand. After several ideations, I took inspiration from the Ebola virus structure to tell its history.

With the glycoprotein structure being the most obvious part of the virus, I concluded using it to depict the deaths, survival, and cases. During my research, I also found that most people before and even don’t know that Ebola had been identified in other countries outside of Africa. This also made me consider highlight the locations as well.

Visual encoding and Design

One of the most difficult parts of the design was the color encoding and shapes' choice to depict the virus. The initial concept was to use a bubble (mushroom) to represent the cases, death, and survival, but I realized it would occlude the map upon implementation. I reconsidered the shape, which led me to use a more geometric form that looked visually pleasing. View the full visualization here

Defining the Legend

A considerable amount of time was spent to refine the design components and the legend particularly. With clarity and simplicity as the goal, I had to trade stylistic elements in favor of the dots, representing the survival and the death rate.

Final Interactive Visualization

After the final design, my work was selected as one of two designs to be developed in collaboration with the Computer Graphics Technology Data Visualization department. I was matched with a developer — Apurva, for us to build the functioning prototype. Over three weeks, we collaborated on Zeplin, Github, and email.

Please view the functioning prototype here.