Thoughts on the Energy Sankey

It is hard for me to decide where to begin with this creation by Otherlabs, a Sankey diagram of the United States energy system. I suppose that I should clarify that the picture on that website is an incomplete screenshot of the full, interactive, and updated version accessible through the link in the caption underneath; I will be mainly discussing the new version. My perspective is that while the Sankey is the best type of visualization for what Otherlabs was contracted to do by the United States Government, several of the design choices are preventing any audience (layman or energy expert) from being best able to see a clear picture from which to draw a conclusion; this visualization is the epitome of clutter. So what can be done?

The Sankey begins with the sources of each type of energy, mainly production and imports. The first thing I can note is that the stations (terminology from Chapter 9 referring to each rectangle in a column) are not sorted. Furthermore, why does petroleum drop to the bottom of the next column; this causes so much unnecessary overlap! The numbers are also not needed; if I wanted them I would click on the appropriate station. Additionally, unlike within the screenshot within the original post, the strips here are bordered by a thin line that and that adds to much of the clutter, especially when later strips become so tiny. 

I much prefer the coloration of the original without the borders. I don't know what else is at play but the original is simply so much more aesthetic and legible; perhaps it is also the color scheme and the transparency levels because in the new version, some strips are too faint such as in the beginning and some strips are too opaque such as in column 5. 

One thing I want to note is that in the top bar there is a layout dropdown button in which you can choose to remove spacing and I find that this is more facilitative of size comparison within a column because it effectively turns it into a stacked column. Otherwise, with the spacing, it makes some columns look bigger than others and it impedes spatial reasoning. 

NOTE: The spacing is required for the later columns because otherwise, the text labels will overlap and the stations will be indistinguishable. This can be fixed by replacing the hyperspecific text labels with general category labels; for example, replace all the NAICS categories with just NAICS and add variations in color for that group to differentiate stations. Although Otherlabs was contracted to show the entirety of the energy system in fine detail, fine detail prevents seeing the big picture. 

As you can see here, in the interactive version, when you zoom in, the text doesn't shrink accordingly, so you are unable to see the detail of the visualization. Furthermore, within the later and taller columns, I have no idea how they're deciding to decompose each category into hyperspecific stations; they need to label each column with how they're choosing to break it down. 

 

Furthermore, I love how within the last column of the screenshot, so much of the text is so small and illegible that, drawing a silver lining, we just refuse to try and read it and only focus on the big picture. 

In the end, it seems that all of my suggestions roughly align with the original screenshot. What is more is that as a mere layman and not the intended audience of an energy expert, I really only see the use of the Sankey in looking at each column and seeing it as a stacked column, and I can't make the most of the pattern of flow between stations. Thus, I would much prefer a series of pies or stacked bars/columns rather than this, especially an interactive version where you can click on each slice to access a deeper level of specificity with its own pie/stack. I would love to see what conclusions an expert in the field could glean from the super Sankey.