Data visualisation and beyond: A multi- disciplinary approach to promote user engagement with official statistics

Abstract

As the World Wide Web becomes a source of increasingly rich content, the appetite among users for data visualisation continues to grow. This perspective resonates with calls from senior figures in UK official statistics for web content that transforms vast amounts of data into meaningful information. To enable this transformation towards rich content, evolving web technology is increasingly facilitating 'integrated content' – text, images, tables and other content types, featuring animation and interactivity, intelligently bound together in the same document. Despite this trend, the outputs produced by many official statistics agencies continue to follow a strict, static linear publication format largely defined by the inertia of print publishing. There are advantages to be obtained by optimising statistical presentations for the web – content is more likely to be syndicated by mainstream press, dramatically increasing outreach. But producing such content requires a multi-disciplinary approach, involving the collaboration of statisticians, designers and developers. This is not a natural approach for most statistical agencies. Experience of producing interactive content as part of the UK 2011 Census first release is described along with the critical user reaction on social media and other channels.