Visualizing Data Coverage
Overview
Earlier this year Planet reached an amazing company mission - image the earth's landmass everyday. Although we have internal software for the image pipeline, we had no way to visually communicate to internal and external users how much data there really was, and where. I decided to use a choropleth map within Planet Explorer. I consulted with map color theorists and data viz experts within the org and landed on using the veridis color pallete because it is easier to read for those with color blindness, and can be extracted in a grey scale as well.
My Role
Worked with company stakeholders and users to understand painpoints
Created wireframes
- Produced all high fidelity mockups for this feature
- Worked with eng during buildout
Background context
Choropleth Maps display divided geographical areas or regions that are colored, shaded or patterned in relation to a data variable. This provides a way to visualize values over a geographical area, which can show variation or patterns across the displayed location. learn more here
Wireframes
Solution
The coverage map is a powerful map visualization that shows both the area percentage ("how much of my area of interest has an image?") as well as image depth ("how many images are within this area of interest?")
