For this visualization, I used Flourish to explore the most popular baby names in the United States from 2001–2010. I chose a hierarchy visualization to show the relative popularity of different names while also distinguishing between male and female names. Rather than looking through the numbers in a spreadsheet, the hierarchy makes it easier to visually compare the names and see which ones have a larger presence in the dataset. The interactive nature of the visualization also allows users to explore the data themselves.
I made several changes to Flourish’s default presentation to make the visualization clearer and more visually appealing. First, I changed the theme to “Flourish: Midnight.” The darker background creates contrast with the brighter colors used for the data, making the individual parts of the visualization easier to distinguish. I also added a title so viewers immediately understand what the visualization represents. In addition, I adjusted the radius of the tree and changed the length and width of the bars. These changes gave the visualization more space and made the hierarchy easier to read. Finally, I added a legend showing that the bluish color represents male names and the pinkish color represents female names. Without the legend, viewers might notice the two colors but would not necessarily know what they represent.
This exercise also connects to ideas from Lin’s lecture and our readings about how data visualization is not simply about displaying information. The choices made by the person creating a visualization affect how viewers understand the data. Choices such as color, size, layout, and labels can emphasize certain patterns while making others less noticeable. In my visualization, for example, using two colors makes gender an immediately visible category, while the hierarchy emphasizes differences in the popularity of names.
This relates particularly well to Digital Humanities because baby names are more than just numerical data. They are also cultural information that can reflect patterns in American society. Digital tools such as Flourish allow us to transform a large collection of data into a visual form that can reveal patterns that would be harder to recognize by looking at a spreadsheet alone. At the same time, the visualization demonstrates that digital representations involve interpretation because the creator has to decide how the information should be organized and presented.