In my Modes of Publishing subject we were asked to create our own ‘visualisation’ on any topic. A visualisation is basically a way of representing raw information or data into an abstract visual form. My group collectively chose to present on the Federal Budget. Here’s what we did…
So unless you’ve been living in a cave you know that the world is in a global economic crisis. The U.S has had massive bailouts, Greece is on the verge of bankruptcy and the Australian government is spending hundreds of millions on school renovations that are running out of funds before the projects finish. In the end, who exactly is left to pick up the tab? It is you: the tax-payer.
So what we have learnt from the global economic crisis if you have watched the news in the last 2 years is that it’s more important than ever for people to understand what the government is doing with their hard earned tax dollars. But when we talk about abnormally large amounts of money like the federal budget it’s very easy to become confused or desensitised to what is being explained. If I tell you that out of a total budget of $324,600,000, $49,100,000 was spent on the healthcare system we can generally understand that portions of a large sum of money have been dually allocated to different causes. But don’t really grasp the relation between them.
As you can see the information presented is not much more helpful than my example. All the different departments where the money is spent are listed but the relationship between them and the disparities in spending are lost in this confusing table. Ultimately it fails to visually represent the information in the most effective and engaging way. Our goal is to make this information more accessible to everyone through simplifying the abstract way in which the different allocations in the budget are presented in relation to one another.
As media makers we wish to publish Federal Budget information and data on the YourBudget.com.au website. Our visualisation seeks to make this information accessible to school kids by simplifying the disparities of the budget and presenting it in a fun and interesting way. We hope the site could be implemented into primary schools and high schools as a way of engaging the kids in this area of education and hopefully preventing future financial chaos. We also hope to mediate the relationship between the government and the citizens it is supposed to serve. We want to draw the attention of politicians who clammer to win our election votes.
Firstly, we have decided to make a child-friendly animated piggy bank visualization that displays how much money percentage wise the government is contributing into the 14 budget categories. The piggy bank is an object that carries culture significance around the world. Often it is an object used to contain our money that we stash away over time with the hope that one day you will have enough saved to spend on something special. In a way our budget is something tax-payers have to store a percentage of their earnings in, with the intended outcome being an Australia that we are proud to call home. The budget data, which was gained from the government’s dull table, has been reconfigured into a visually stimulating half pie/half bar chart form, shown to scale with the largest quantity at the bottom and the smallest at the top.
With the second visualisation, we wished to capitalise on the participatory autonomy that Web 2.0 affords to its users. Upon clicking the visualization, you are the given the choice to be classes as a Liberal, Labour or Greens supporter. Next, you are asked to select which out of the 14 departments you wish to see more funding and attention given to. The results are then added to the total tallies. The scale of these tallies is represented by the variation in font size and the political party is symbolized through colour. What we want to evoke through this visualization is a clear and very current social map of various political views regarding the Federal budget.
