TYPE INDICATION™

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GUARDIAN ELECTION 2010 SWINGOMETER

GENERAL ELECTION 2010, APRIL/MAY 2010


THE SWINGOMETER INTERACTIVE / ELECTION NIGHT RESULTS INTERACTIVE /

Images of the interactives main functions Swingometer / Schematic map / Geographic map / Bar chart / Night of the election /

April 6th and the Guardians election guide has finally been launched. Election planning began a good few months. Designs were complete around the 6th of March leaving the remaining time for development and snagging. Before I start the real work was done by Alastair Dant and Martin Shuttleworth, the two programs working on the back end of the the Guardians election interactive. Couldn't have been done with out them.

BREIF: Design an election results interactive. Visualize a way of representing a swing between the three main parties, a constituency map and proportional constituency map.

ANALYSIS: Five years ago I had used circles to represent each constituency and current party in power. This year it was going to have to be different. The constituencies were to become squares, an obvious evolution of the 2005 map projection. Five years on and the priority had changed from the newspaper to website and so the structure would have to change too. With the size restrictions due to advertising on the right hand side and the lack of depth before the fold we had to get in as much as could in the space we had. We really shouldn't have gone as deep as we did but the problem was that the shape of the UK is a rectangle and dictates the ratio.

Search capabilities and selection. Click the search icon and type in a constituency name, select it and it will appear on the map and it will stay selected when switching between the three view options.

Final words: All though only a few names were mentioned a lot more were involved, this was a great team effort. Special thanks to Michael Robinson who gave me the freedom to design.
Alastair Dant, Martin Shuttleworth, Jenny Ridly and Paul Scruton.