NY Times Visualizations Critique

I am writing this letter to give feedback of the information visualization website: “Student Debt at Colleges and Universities Across the Nation” whose link is http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/ 2012/05/13/business/student-debt-at-colleges-and-universities.html. Aiming at users from the education community, this visualization effectively conveys the information by various interaction techniques, such as animation, chart and map. Overall, the visualization is attractive, especially the animation to simulate the change of the debt versus cost with respect to the change of years which I like most. Although not smooth, the animation provides users with a clear sense of how the debt changes. Another part which adds point to the visualization is the powerful filter, by which users select the information they are interested in based on five filtering conditions. Moreover, the search bar has the functionality of searching suggestion which significantly improve the user experience by facilitating the users’ input.