Stress and distraction

Financial website Portfolio.com made an inventory of factors that can increase stress in metro areas, ranging from unemployment and traffic to pollution and even the weather. These were quantified for the 50 largest cities in the States. The results are visualized on an interactive map. A good idea but the implementation could have been better. For one thing I would have liked to be able to compare the areas on each individual factor. Secondly I prefer a click instead of a mouse-over to reveal popup windows. Last but not least, the animation of the steam doesn’t contain information but certainly adds distraction.