Sources: National Bureau of Statistics of China and World Bank.

This is an interactive project I produced in 2015. It’s still under construction, and therefore offers many areas upon which to focus my critique. The overarching goal of this project is to compare Chinese provinces with other countries in the world, by looking at a variety of their respective economic measures: GDP per capita, employment rate, college enrollment rate and life expectancy. I intentionally chose measures that are not driven by population size, in order to provide a fair comparison. 
This project idea originated from my long-held belief that there is not only ‘one’ China—there are many Chinas. Some of the provinces in China are as economically rich as European countries, while other Chinese provinces are economically lacking. Therefore, I created this project: “If Chinese provinces were countries. . .”.
This project will offer both a far view of China and a near one. For the far view, the landing pages show the national/global picture of the data with a choropleth map. One of the drawbacks of using a choropleth map is that it is hard to compare different provinces’ numbers. Instead of just hovering over one province and showing the number, as this system currently does, one solution might be to add an ordered list of provinces. Then, when the reader hovers over the province on the list, the province on the map would automatically be highlighted. This would give readers a relative scale to look at, and it would make the map more visually organized and, therefore, more useful. 
For the near view, if the reader clicks on the country of his choice, it will lead him to another page, which shows a more detailed picture; this picture shows the five closest countries to that province on each economic measure, and how that province/country compares with the world median. My intention is to let a reader look at his or her own country, countries of interest, or even simply explore. Through that exploration, readers will understand the whole—the current state of global economics—by relating it to the individual examples that they have explored. To make my reader’s life easier, I would add a search function, which would allow the reader to search a country, zoom in to that country, and directly view more details of that country. As an added touch, I definitely will make another map with a composite index calculated by five measures. I think it will be more interesting to show equivalent countries with a mixed measure. 
This project was created, moreover, with a number of design-based visions in mind. Among these was my decision to design tiny Chinese elements to cater my story content. I illustrated this little stamp which means produced by Fan Fei, and sketched this Great Wall for my home page. I also used the color red throughout this project, because red represents China. 
There are still visual-design changes to come, though. I will move the legend to the top-left of as it is very distracting when it appears to the center. Also, the color scheme for the unemployment rate map is not working very well—the map looks muddy. I will change it into quantile scale instead. Additionally, to make this project more aesthetically appealing, I will include an illustrated version of architecture for each province and country.
A concluding note of critique: as of now, this project is not responsive on mobile phones. I am considering making my mobile design different from that of the web application, since map and hover functions do not work well on mobile design. I am also thinking about creating a series of cards for a set of particularly interesting provinces. Still, I will include collapsible trees and line charts on the cards.