Atomic Visualization of Serious Risk Products
January 9, 2014
When a product (e.g. a toy, a childcare article or a household appliance) is posing a serious risk to the health and safety of civilians it will be collected in a central rapid alert system (RAPEX) by the European Commission. Since 2013 the Commission also publishes notifications on products posing less than serious risk as well as notifications on professional products and on those posing a risk to other public interests protected via the relevant EU legislation (i.e. the notifications are dealing not only with products posing a serious risk, but also posing other risk levels). The goal is to facilitate the rapid exchange of information on products posing a risk to the health and safety of professional users as well as on those posing a risk to other public interests protected via the relevant EU legislation (e.g. environment and security). Notified products may need to be withdrawn from the market, recalled from consumers or warnings are needed to prevent risks and accidents.
The data visualization represents all collected products in 2013 and by clicking on one of the following tabs the products are displayed and structured based on a chosen attribute (e.g. country of origin or product category). It is possible to arrange every single product to a specific position because of the atomic representation. The underlying data is a multidimensional data model which allows the analysis of products from different perspectives. One perspective could be one or more dimensions (e.g. arrange all products along the country of origin). The free arrangement is used to summarize the products depending on each value (e.g. Belgium) of one attribute (e.g. country of origin). Through switching between two dimensions is a fluent animation used to arrange the products correctly. In this way, the user can track the change between two different stats.
On the hand, atomic visualizations provide the best fit to achieve an overview without losing any detail but on the other hand, it is stressing the performance of the visualization technique, too. From my point of view, atomic visualization is a way to avoid data aggregation or elimination and a love to detail. The usage for smartphones or energy-saving tables is really restricted because of the higher hardware requirements.