A Story about Suicide

There is a welcome page to show how to explore the map with a brief instruction. We set two sidebars on the right up to let users explore data by text selection or search. The default selections of continent and country are none, reminding users to choose an area for exploration; continents and countires are alphabetical ordered under selection. Users can first select a continent they are interested in, then they will find the map interface zooms into that continent or country. The plots below will show the suicide rate by gender/age group of each continent. Users can check the detailed value of average suicide rate by clicking on the bar.

For the cartographic design:
(1) Gender Theme: we visualize total suicide rate by a choropleth map, which can reflect the regional variations directly. We use purple as the predominant color ("#D8C4FB", "#CEA2E9", "#A16BBD", "#8459A8", "#542F60") to create a slightly melancholic atmosphere. We do think each suicide is a tragedy, so we visualize gender suicide rate by a proportional map to emphasize the absolute value. The size of points reflects the suicide rate of the dominant gender in the selected country. We use blue and pink ("#00B0F0","#D52977") to distinguish the dominant gender of suicide in this country. For these two maps, we add corresponding legends (three in total) to help users understand the thematic maps. Since the purpose of our map is to give users a brief overview of this topic, so we add the legend directly on the left of map, which takes of 20% area of the whole interface.
(2) Age Theme: the general design is similar, We use purple as the predominant color ("#d0efff", "#2a9df4", "#187bcd", "#1167b1", "#03254c") to create a slightly melancholic atmosphere. We use yellow (adults) and orange (elder adults) ("#f5da11","#d98a0b") to distinguish the dominant gender of suicide in this country.

For the map interface, we set basic and pop-up buttons. Apart from zooming, we set a layer group, and users can customize which layer(s) they tend to focus on. They can choose to conceal it if needed. For the content interface, maps for two theme only show data in 2019 (recent year). When they pop up the polygon, it will show the continent, country name with the suicide rate by gender/age group for this country; when they pop up the point, it will show the continent, country name with the gender/age suicide rate from year 2015 to 2019.

Limitation

There is a time lag in the latest data (2019) we obtained. We lack an interactive feature that allows users to select a year and view a map generated accordingly. We create separate pages to highlight different aspects of suicide distribution, but this is not ideal for people who prefer to overview these aspects simultaneously on a single map interface. It is difficult to perform a global attribution suicide analysis because of the wide variation in natural endowments, economic structures, and cultures across countries.

Conclusion

The map interface shows suicide rates vary markedly among countries around the world. It also indicates that male is dominant gender in suicide; people elder than 55 years old are the primary group for suicide over these years. From the dataset, however, it is welcome to see that total suicide rate is decreasing globally in recent years. Our work provides an insight into different regional variations and potential factors in suicide distribution.