New York: A Comparison of Official State COVID Data Visualization Dashboards
The COVID pandemic has offered us a unique opportunity to compare data visualization dashboards, as different US states approached the problem of how to communicate relevant COVID data to the public? Nearly every US State has released one or more official dashboards from their Departments of Health, but approaches in HOW each state is communicating that information through data visualization and dashboards is wildly different. Through this series, I’ll be examining each state’s dashboards through a design perspective, critiquing how the data are presented, and whether it’s effective communication. I’ll ask each dashboard the questions below to determine how well that state can answer each question simply, clearly and effectively towards multiple levels of users.
This comparison will be limited to dashboard and visualization design.
- Not an analysis of the state’s sourcing of COVID data.
- Not an analysis of the data trends and insights.
Basic COVID Public Health Questions
- What’s the trend of new cases and deaths over time in my state?
- Where in my state are people testing positive?
- What’s the demographic breakdown of who is testing positive?
- How many people are we testing? What percent of the tests result in a Positive diagnosis?
- How busy are the hospitals — are they close to capacity?
- How many people are getting the vaccine?
- How does the dashboard look on mobile?
- Can I download the data?
- How frequently is the data updated?
State: New York
New York State Department of Health: https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/
New York’s COVID dashboard is built in Tableau, and uses a very clean, consistent color combination of blue and yellow that is easy on the eyes with consistency of color across all pages. The dashboard includes five pages of information, separated by (1) Map View, (2) Daily Trends, (3) Table View, (4) Fatality Data and (5) FAQs & Helpful links.
The main graphic on the first page is a county by county map, color coordinated with a clear legend, along with an info button to explain to users how to use the map and what the data means. The interactive map allows users to easily find stats for their county. Color coding is clear and easy to understand.
The KPIs focus first on testing (total persons since the beginning of time, and yesterday alone), followed by positive cases (beginning of time and yesterday), and a gender distribution. Front page doesn’t have any info about deaths, hospitalization or positive percentage rates. The total page real estate dedicated to these 7 data points is about 25% of the screen.
Unlike Florida, there are no big glaring numbers focusing on deaths. However a separate tab includes all the death info, with a lot of interesting other data points — geography (county of both place of death and place of residence), demographic breakdowns of gender, race and age. A very interesting table includes top 10 comorbidities by age group — a very useful bit for accessing one’s own health risk. You can also find links to data provided from Nursing homes and other care facilities.
The table results view carries the same blue and yellow theme, although unfortunately the designers choice of creating the table with bold, large font white print for the data on a dark blue background. This is much less easy on the eyes, and hard to discern between the data points. Printing this table wouldn’t be pretty. Users can select a row, and the table provides a highlighting, but in this case, the white font of the data on the light blue color of the highlight is even harder to read. When viewing on mobile, the white font on blue background becomes especially problematic and hard to read.
Basic COVID Public Health Questions
What’s the trend of new cases and deaths over time in my state?
Trending only for daily persons tested and positive results. Users can opt to see last 7 days, or daily data since the beginning of the pandemic. Death rates are provided as a summary, and broken up across multiple different types of viewing the data from count to age-adjusted death rate. No trending is provided for death.
Where in my state are people testing positive?
Easily view data for any particular NY county. In addition, the dashboard can break NYC out of the state results to see the difference.
What’s the demographic breakdown of who is testing positive?
A comprehensive demographic breakdown of fatalities, but not on the people testing positive.
How many people are we testing? What percent of the tests result in a positive diagnosis?
Very transparent on reporting counts of testing, with negative versus positive results. Dashboard doesn’t focus much on the percent of testing that results in a positive result.
How busy are the hospitals — are they close to capacity?
No info on hospitals
How many people are getting the vaccine?
The COVID tracking dashboard doesn’t include the info, or even any links, but a New York State Vaccine tracker dashboard exists here: https://covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
How does the dashboard look on mobile?
When viewing on mobile, the white font on blue background becomes especially problematic and hard to read. Otherwise the mobile site is clean and is designed well for mobile devices (or at least the iPhone 10 that I tested it on.)
Can I download the data?
No download provided.
How frequently is the data updated?
Daily, Two days behind
