Where is your money spent? See how much you spend on McDonalds compared to how much you contribute to national health, or recreation compared to social security and welfare.
Identifying perspectives, attitudes and assumptions:
The main attitude or assumption that I believe most people have toward their spending is ignorance or unawareness toward the amount of money they spend each week on seemingly small things like fast food, alcohol, personal care and recreation.
I want to address is the complicated nature of national spending that makes it hard for people to comprehend, or gain perspective of how their money is being spent. I want to create a perspective for the user, so they can put government expenditure next to their own household expenditure and compare where money is being spent.
Objective:
This infographic appreciates the complexity of national and household expenditure, and seeks to offer users a simpler way to comprehend their spending habits. Due to the attitudes, assumptions and perspectives identified above, the aim of my infographic is to easily show users and taxpayers where their money is being spent, and hopes to bring light to areas of spending that may need to be changed.
Types of spending:
Government Expenditure 2010-11
Community Services and culture: $8679 million
Health: $56 880 million
General Government services: $92 862 million
Industry and workforce: $14 727 million
Education: $32 996 million
Defence: $21 000 million
Infrastructure, transport and energy: $12 539 million
Social security and welfare: $114 961 million
- I need to average these amount to an individual Australian per week so I can accurately compare them to the below household spending types.
Household Expenditure 2003-04:
Food and non-alcoholic beverages: $153/week
Housing Costs: $144/week
Transport: $139/week
Recreation: $115/week
Misc goods and services: $80/week
Household services and operation: $55/week
Household furnishing and equipment: $53/week
Medical care and health expenses: $49/week
Clothing and footwear: $35/week
Domestic fuel and power: $25/week
Alcoholic beverages: $25/week
Personal care: $20/week
Tobacco products: $15/week
NOTE: The data for Government expenditure is from the 2010-11 Budget. However, the data for Household expenditure is from a ABS 2003-04 research study. Although it is not accurate or ideal to compare data studies conducted years apart, this is the most recent information I could find during my research for Household expenditure. Due to the lack of more recent data I will be using this information in my infographic, and comparing the data variables as best as possible.
Going Forward:
Going Forward:
- I need to organize and synthesise the information so they can be compared accurately – e.g. make the amounts for each data set both per Australian, per week.
- Brainstorm different ways of representing the data/comparisons
- Analyse the pros/cons of each
Ways to represent the data/comparisons:
Having researched and refined my data, I now have to develop how I want to represent the data. I really want to allow the user to visually see and associate these data sets because being able to compare what one spends on McDonalds in comparison to what one spends on healthcare is really quite incomprehensible to most people.
Since researching other national spending infographics and illustrations, I have decided to start playing with the idea of have all the spending types represented as icons in an area of the screen (perhaps a bar at the top) and allow the user to select what data they want to compare and drag and drop these categories onto a larger screen, to really compare and associate the information. I need to think about how I want to portray the scale and measurement of the data – whether by a bar graph, pie chart, percentages, dollar amounts etc.
I want to really play with the multi-touch aspect of the infographic and make the interaction element the main focal point of the application. If the infographic is easy and fun to use, the data will most likely be communicated more effectively.
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