Projects/Where Does My Money Go/Structuring Navigation using icons

= Structuring Navigation using Icons =

When making use of icons, we impose a narrative on the COFOG structure. This sometimes means deep-linking to more than one classification branch on the tree. We need to consider how this curated navigation will work.

This proposes how we can link icons to the view which tells the most interesting story. This rewards users who are interested in investigating the information in depth, in a way that makes use of the views we are developing, in the context of the new structure. Onward navigation into other domains will be easier when users have more options.

We should think of these as use-cases for how interesting we can make a very data-rich application. They will be a good way for us to test out ways of building up visualizations, and also deep linking principles.

Navigation with icons
Ideally, icons should be used to link directly into an interesting story, rather than an unconsidered view. Using the prototype, we can find the most interesting narratives around each of the different functions.

Using the info box
The info box is a means of adding content and value to deep linked charts. Absent any other interesting stuff, we can use the info box to illuminate the story that people are looking at. This can be some commentary associated with the deep linked chart, news links etc.

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Financial bubbles
These are the areas where the interesting story is in comparing the sizes of the bubbles within the domain. The bubble graph as it stands does this quite well. By comparison, time and regional comparisons are rather bland.

These stories can be enriched with attractive iconography to enhance their friendly simplicity.

Social protection
This area contains things people will be very interested in. We can build up a whole experience around this. I like David's classification here - helping each other.
 * Pensions
 * Disability
 * Family benefits
 * Housing benefits
 * Social exclusion
 * Unemployment

Education
Regional comparison is fairly bland, in that there is not much variety per capita. The story is in the bubble chart, in comparison between domains.
 * Primary education
 * Under fives
 * Secondary education
 * Secondary education
 * Tertiary education
 * Post-secondary, non-tertiary == adult education, NVQ etc

Spending over time
This is where you can see dramatic changes in spending over time.

Health care
This is a bit of a special case. We don't have much of the right kind of data.
 * Increase in heath spending over the last ten years is the big story.
 * Can we use regional comparisons to make assumptions about people's health in different areas? Could be a false distinction.

We should leave this area a bit open for when we get onto local authorities and NHS trusts.

Social housing

 * Disproportionate increase over the last five years.

Drill into regions
This is where we need to be able to look closely at itemized regional spending.

These numbers should really be compared 'per capita' for meaningful comparisons over regions. This is slightly complicated by the addition of UK-Wide spending, which is very interesting in the case of Art & Culture.

Public Order & Safety
Falls into nice sections. Regional comparison show London & Northern Ireland dramatically leading the field.
 * Police
 * Law courts
 * Prisons
 * Fire protection

Transport
This needs to be extracted from Economic affairs.
 * Roads and trains
 * Regional comparisons over time

Art & Culture

 * National spending - cost of BBC
 * Regional spending

Environment
Drill down, highlight cost of Sellafield
 * Mostly waste management
 * Regional comparison over time.

Compare and Contrast
This is where we can make some very interesting comparisons between items in the lower levels.

Housing
Some very interesting stories in here.
 * Housing development compared to housing benefit
 * Disproportionate increase in spending on social housing
 * Regional comparisons

Transport, Agriculture, Environment, Water
Make some comparisons between aspects of land management and infrastructure.

Special Cases
These are poorly defined areas where most spending is by central government, but we can find some interesting stories with a bit of research. Lend themselves nicely to static visualizations.

Defence

 * All by central government
 * interesting to look at over time.
 * Make some comparisons here:
 * cost of jet with cost of hospital??

Public sector debt
This needs some explanation. What exactly is it?