Visualizing Science: Pronghorn migration & roads

Or, to put it a different way: how can GPS-collars contribute to effective conservation and management decisions?

​That’s the question I’m trying to answer by letting the reader actually see and interact with the story. I’d like to have a “show don’t tell” approach to let the reader piece the information together into a story. Right now though, the story is still static.

Given the goal, the target audience is people who already have some understanding of GPS-collar studies and wildlife management. I would like to expand the target audience more to the general public of Wyoming. That is why I started the visual with an image of Interstate-80: a view anyone from Wyoming should be familiar with.

References for this visual also include this Anasazi pictograph. At first, I included the pictograph because I thought it was something I could draw (note: I cannot). Despite the Anasazi having nothing to do with Wyoming, I really like the contrast between the Interstate and the pictograph.

​Modernity and history.

​The framework for my visualization is this visual essay. I like this framework of moving vertically through the story with two columns, it’s intuitive, pulls you in and encourages you to read the full story.
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This is just scratching the surface of where I want this visualization to go. I want to actually show movement. Two GoogleEarth images next to each other (see locations labeled 1 and 2 on the concept sketch above) hardly compares to actual movement. Additionally, I don’t like how those two images are left-to-right. I’d rather keep all visuals moving up-down. It disturbs the flow of the visual to go from down to right to left-and-down for each picture. I also need to think about background; pictures on a white surface are hardly pleasing to look at.

So I’ll brew up the next cup of coffee, and keep rolling. There’s still a lot I need to do to improve!