I’ve been working on an open-source project called FollowTheMoney. It is a data visualization project that will use Processing to create interactive information graphics displaying campaign finance contributions to elected politicians and candidates as well as the positions of the politicians and candidates on issues.

We started the project with interviews, then created personas, and began exploring some options for the visual design. See the project workspaces to view the outcomes of these initial steps.

The team generated a first round sketches for the UI, some of which involved a smooth but long selection process before any information graphics were shown. Some other versions presented suggested visualizations based on items in the news or popular visualizations.

Also, some versions had a clear split between making the selection for which data to view and the presentation of the data itself, while others had a more hybrid approach.

In reviewing the first round of sketches and our interview results, it became clear that our users will not want to deal with an involved multi-step UI before any data is presented. Also, some users will tend to search for something specific, while some will want to be able to discover interesting patterns based on a candidate or a contributor.