This project is a collaboration between Center for Spatial Research and  Columbia Law School- Cities of Bail. Our work is to design and build a interactive data visualization website for showing bail bonds over 20 years in 5 American cities. The visualization is to investigate how bail bonds affect the make up of American communities, and find which communities are targeted by bail companies.

I explored different ways to compare the two datasets to help users identify areas with severe financial burden and bail bond issues—such as overlaying visualizations, placing two maps side by side, or integrating them into a bivariate map for clearer insights.

I used Mapbox Studio to test colors, text contrast, and transparency, ensuring clear layouts and accessible visualizations.

To improve accessibility, I optimized map colors for contrast and tested them against four types of color blindness: Protanopia, Deuteranopia, Tritanopia, and Achromatopsia, ensuring  critical elements stayed readable.

Beyond mapping the datasets at the geolocation level, I designed and tested chart-based visualizations—using common comparison practices like grouped bar charts and scatter plots.

To address overplotting with 406 data points and labels, I tested reducing label size, highlighting key labels, and hiding all labels to show on hover.

Another challenge was visualizing both numerical attributes (e.g., amount) and a key categorical attribute (bond status: released, foreclosed, pending). Users often want to focus on foreclosed bonds, so I explored solutions like filter toggle (hide/show) and adding a dimension using different icon shapes.

To show trends in bond data over the past 20 years, I explored different visualizations, including grouped bar charts and Sankey diagrams.