This interactive data visualization provides insights into nut production, as well as the export and import of nuts around the world. The information is coded only by color, shape, size, position and animation. No alphanumeric characters or pictographic representations were allowed. The data visualization was implemented in Javascript.
Nuts have gained a lot of popularity worldwide in the current century. They are an important component of a healthy diet and are an indispensable part of a vegetarian or vegan diet. However, very few nuts are produced here in Germany. Therefore, I asked myself: Where do the nuts actually come from that we can buy already shelled in our supermarket?
The data I use in the visualization was collected by FAOSTAT. FAOSTAT is the statistics department of FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. FAOSTAT has been collecting a large amount of information about food, nutrition and agriculture since 1961, which serves as the basis for FAO's strategies and decisions.
In the home screen, the viewer gets an overview of which countries produce which nut types the most. For countries that produce several nut types, the quantity is displayed in rings around each other. The nut type that is produced the least is on the inside and the one that is produced the most is on the outside.
In the individual view, the viewer can better compare how much of a nut type is produced in the different countries. The individual view is accessed by hovering the mouse over one of the five circles below the world map. The five circles are of different sizes, as they represent the sum of the nuts produced worldwide of the respective nut type.
In this view, the viewer can observe which path the nuts still take after production. This path is divided into three stages in the visualization: Production, import/export with shell and import/export without shell. Starting with the production figures, the import figures are added and the export figures are subtracted. Thus, the viewer can see the export and import as a change in circle sizes on the map by hovering the mouse over the rectangles at the bottom of the screen. In addition, an animation in the Nussart bar indicates which stage the viewer is currently in.
The timeline view shows how the production figures in a specific country have changed over the years. If the viewer clicks on a circle in the home screen, the timelines of the country the circle represents are displayed. For each type of nut produced by the respective country, a separate timeline is drawn with a maximum time span from 1961 to 2017.
