REMOTE WORKING IS THE NEW NORMAL
From co working spaces to the all-pervading mini coffee shops with free Wi-Fi, a growing number of people are working remotely, and this is slowly changing the way we live our lives.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one-third of the workforce and nearly half of all ‘information workers’ are able to work from home. Though the number of people working remotely partially or fully has been on the rise for years now, especially in the U.S., the COVID 19 pandemic may have pressed the fast-forward button.
With millions of people now participating in this work from home experiment, it is worth asking how companies and people feel about working from home?
The visualization in focus looks at the benefits of working from home. Also, the data was collected prior to the COVID 19 pandemic.
A survey of 3500+ workers by the State of Remote Work revealed some of the things that people value highly using a stacked bar chart.
What worked for the visualization:
- The title and labels are marked and clearly defined.
- The chart looks simple and efficient. The message is getting communicated.
- The source is included.
What did not work for the visualization:
- The picture is very prominent and tends to distract. The data should be the focus.
- The use of colors for each benefit is not necessary. Focusing on a story or a subset of the data using the same color for the data points that stand out would be more effective.
- ‘Benefits’ in the title is underlined in yellow as ‘working from home’. Not sure if this is deliberate
My interpretation:
1. I used a spider chart to showcase the categories that stand out and to convey the information more effectively. A radar or spider chart is a two-dimensional chart type designed to plot one or more series of values over multiple quantitative variables. Each variable has its own axis and all variables are joined at the center of the figure. These charts are useful for showing which variables score high or low in the dataset, hence making them ideal for showcasing performance.
2. 32%, 26% and 21% of the respondents prefer having the ability to run a flexible schedule, to have the option to work from anywhere and to not commute to their place of work, respectively.
Spider or Radar charts are also often criticized by data designers mainly for the following reasons:
1. Can be hard to read: Quantitative values are easier to read when they are laid out on a single vertical or horizontal axis. This is a general reproach made to circular layouts.
2. Category order has a huge impact: Radar charts focus on the shape observed. This shape depends on the ordering of the categories observed.
3. Small changes tend to be more exaggerated: The area of a radar chart changes quadratically rather than linearly which may deceive viewers into thinking that small changes are more significant than they are.
In this case, a bar chart or a lollipop chart, ranking the variables are the ideal alternatives to display information with a single series where all quantitative variables have the same scale (% in this study).
Let me know what you think about the viz. Are there any suggestions that you want to make? What do you think of Remote Work in 2020?
