#IronViz – Let’s Go on a Pokémon Safari!

It’s that time again – Iron Viz!  The second round of Iron Viz entered my world via an email with a very enticing “Iron Viz goes on Safari!” theme.  My mind immediately got stuck on one thing: Pokémon Safari Zone.

Growing up I was a huge gamer and Pokémon was (and still is) one of my favorites.  I even have a cat named after a Pokémon, it’s Starly (find her in the viz!).  So I knew if I was going to participate that the idea for Pokémon Safari was the only way to go.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how I might want to bring this to life.  Did I want to do a virtual safari of all the pocket monsters?  Did I want to focus on the journey of Ash Ketchum through the Safari Zone?  Did I want to focus on the video games?

After all the thoughts swirled through my mind – I settled on the idea of doing a long form re-creation of Ash Ketchum’s adventure through the Safari Zone in the anime.  I sat down and googled to figure out the episode number and go watch.  But to my surprise the episode has been banned.  It hasn’t made it on much TV and the reason it is banned makes it very unattractive and unfriendly for an Iron Viz long form.  I was gutted and had to set off on a different path.

The investment into the Safari Zone episode got me looking through the general details of the Safari Zone in the games.  And that’s what ended up being my hook.  I tend to think in a very structured format and because there were 4 regions that HAD Safari Zones (or what I’d consider to be the general spirit of one) it made it easy for me to compare each of them against each other.

Beyond that I knew I wanted to keep the spirit of the styling similar to the games.  My goal for the viz is to give the end user an understanding of the types of Pokémon in each game.  To show some basic details about each pocket monster, but to have users almost feel like they’re on the Safari.

There’s also this feeling I wanted to capture – for anyone who has played Pokémon you may know it.  It’s the shake of the tall grass.  It is the tug of the Fishing Pole.  It’s the screen transition.  In a nutshell: what Pokémon did I just encounter?  There is a lot of magic in that moment of tall grass shake and transition to ‘battle’ or ‘encounter’ screen.

My hope is that I captured that well with the treemaps.  You are walking through each individual area and encountering Pokémon.  For the seasoned Safari-goer, you’ll be more interested in knowing WHERE you should go and understanding WHAT you can find there.  Hence the corresponding visuals surrounding.

The last component of this visualization was the Hover interactivity.  I hope it translates well because I wanted the interactivity to be very fluid.  It isn’t a click and uncover – that’s too active.  I wanted this to be a very passive and openly interactive visualization where the user would unearth more through exploring and not have to click.

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