Visualizing Japan’s Census Geographies
In this project, I looked into how Japan's Statistical Bureau divides up the country to collect statistics. There are many similarities to the US Census. Again, I experimented with creating slides that a non-linear.
In a linear slide, you get from Point A to Point B to Point C. In a non-linear slide, you can start from any of the points whether that's Point A, B or C. This helps with explaining complicated relationships of the geographies.
I use the Figma for both the research process and slides assembly.
In this project, I took the lessons I learned from the US Census Project – particularly about assembling slides – and used them in this project. Because of that, my process turned out to be much faster. Here are some of the lessons I've learned.
Research Process
In the US Census Project, I rushed to create slides even though I did not get the full picture yet. Because of that, my slides evolved rather organically and did not have a centralized menu that ties everything together neatly. I changed my method and made sure that I did my research thoroughly and completely before starting on my slides. I checked in with the professor I've been working with. Once all the research material has been collected and review, I started working on the slides.
The benefit of this method is that it gives me a map or a blueprint to lay out information. If the blueprint is still evolving, then the house will also evolve in the same way. Often, this evolution will make it hard to understand the relationships.
I also separated where I do my research and where I lay out my slides. In the US Census project, I did them on the same Figma file. Because of this, I had a lot of trouble trying to access many different things at once while assembling the slides.
Slides Layout And Assembly
The reason I use the word assembly is because I like to think of the process as a factory assembly line. There's a list of steps (I did not have this for the US Census Project) that I need to go through:
Layout the main menu slide, so that I can see how all the different components are related to each other. This is the map or the main blueprint I will use to construct the rest of the slides.
Layout the slides, but leave an empty space for the sidebar menu and arrows.
At the same time, leave out a slide with the sidebar menu placement and arrows. I will copy these onto every slide once the main content is finished.
When the content is finished, I add in the sidebar and arrows.
In the prototype stage, I connect the slides together.
When there are reoccurring items (such as the menu), I will make sure that I create a main controlling component first before adding it to every slide. That way, I only have to wire up the frames once.
Conclusion
Overall, I think the process worked well because I planned out everything in advance. This saved me a lot of time. I also thought that I chose the right tools. Figma is originally used for creating mock-ups for website and mobile, but I wanted to try to use it for presentations. That was how I was able to use the strengths of websites and mobile applications on the slides.
There are still some parts I wasted time on such as creating a menu for certain slides without making sure that it was a component, but that was solved relatively quickly.
In the future, I need even better planning. I need to think through of how I might better use Figma's components feature. But nevertheless, I will continue to use the steps above to quickly assemble slides.