The inspiration for this project started after I watched a video named The Girl Effect, which is a movement based on the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world.
As I research more on this subject matter, I learned that — “girls can play a crucial role in solving the most persistent development problems we face in the world today. When we includes girls in education, health, economic investment, we have a better chance of preventing issues such as child marriage, teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and breaking the inter-generational cycle of poverty…. ” “…It’s about leveraging the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and the world. It’s about making girls visible and changing their social and economic dynamics by providing them with specific, powerful and relevant resources.”
According to a study published by ICRW(International Center for Research on Women), more than 100 million girls in the developing world will be married during the next 10 years, and although the definition of child marriage includes boys, most children married under the age of 18 years are girls. While the practice has decreased globally over the last 30 years, it remains common in rural areas and among the poorest of the poor. In Southern Asia, 48%—nearly 10 million—of girls are married before the age of 18; in Africa, 42% of girls were married before turning 18; in Latin America and the Caribbean, 29% of girls are married by age 18.
As I have a background in finance/number, over the years, I learned that not everyone is comfortable with numbers, and lesser of them are able to tell the story behind. My first instinct then is to recreate and compare average age of 1st marriage in different regions so that:
a) It is easier for user to see all numbers from various socio-regions in one place.
b) For one particular socio-region, user can easily understand trends- does the number go up/down over the years.
Gather numbers and create a database would be the first step. It is a much more difficult task than I expected as I thought such numbers should be easily accessible at sites such as World Bank, WHO… etc. However, I was surprised that I spent most time collecting partially available numbers from sites such as Plan-UK, PBS, quandl.com, ICRW, economist… etc. And to make the database successful and complete, I had to go in and manually parse through each set of numbers, made adjustments and modifications so I can display them in the way that it makes sense to users. Another surprise I had is, when I parsed through those numbers, I didn’t expect to see average age from South Africa (31 y/o) is higher then those from USA and UK, and in recent years, China has a pretty close number(25 y/o) with USA(27 y/o).
One challenge I encountered is, as I read on, I learned the scope of this project might not be big enough to cover everything, especially given the time frame of 2 weeks. For instance — what if not only do I show numbers of first marriage in west Africa, I also provide more details and facts about in recent years, more and more girls fight back and say no to marriage forced upon them by parents/traditional tribe chief?
Apart from parsing though numbers, I also spent much time on how to map out data. Initially, I thought I would display each region with their own 10-year numbers. However, that wouldn’t involve the user interaction much and it would be just one-way presentation, many users expressed that they want to compare and contrast numbers. After much considerations, instead of displaying individual country with their own numbers, I decided to set up the display based on socio regions, that way, I can also extend the project onto male version of the data with other regions, and detailing more recent facts and real stories to make the project more compelling.
Also, following the feedback I had from Roopa and some user testings, I decided to make the lines look more dynamic so when user click through they will be able to see the line moving as flowing through.
Here is the final version of the project, when the user click on buttons, they are able to view and compare ages from various regions.
This is a project with possibilities of expansion, as time goes by, I can update more by years, by regions, by genders.
In term of the overall assessment of this class: in the beginning of the semester, I only have limited knowledge of HTML, which has nothing to do with user interaction. From this final project, which is actually a review of what we learned over the semester, and all other projects we had during the last 12 weeks, I learned one new skill to present data that requires actual interaction. It’s obvious I need to practice more, but I can definitely see in the future, this is a great element and addition I can facilitate in many meetings, so the audience can stay awake and hopefully walk away with an impression.