The Reflective Practitioner @desn302reflectionromifellow-blog - Tumblr Blog

Posts

Plastic Side Chair by Marius Roosendaal

Josef Muller-Brockmann & The International Typographic Style by Quentin Delobel.

#data visualisation #design #inspiration

Week 13- Feedback from Final Presentations

Grant-

excellent journey! Excellent Depth!

How do you represent what you have?, will discuss wednesday

Revisit concept statement, maybe focus on the relationships between data?

Potential future developments- taking this process that you understand + make a series

Outstanding job in this subject= articulate this in statement and report.

don't underestimate your amount of detail

excel in assessment

Jo-

Process to refine + understand data has become your issue- discuss this further with lecturers/tutors

Look at now- design, composition, relationship with type, neatly space etc.

Keep it simple with the name of the project, maybe just list as "Data Visualistion| Asylum Seekers in Australia"

You have created a system by learning how to interpret this into a set of data.

Refined Concept Statement (based on grant's suggestions)

Highway (design principles)

• Design Issue- Exploring the process involved in the visualisation of data and the use of data circles as a method of this design field.

• Design Context- Data visualisation

• Project Form- A large poster which consists of a series of smaller posters that each present a data circle visualisation of data related to asylum seekers arriving in Australia.

• Background Information- This project aims to visualise the Asylum seeker issue in Australia, educating and engaging a wide community audience about this topic. Due to the nature of the social issue and medium involved, a more specific target audience of 16-35 years olds, with limited knowledge in data visualisation, will be intended.

Motor Car (design artifact)

• Project form- A large poster which consists of a series of smaller posters that each present a data circle visualisation of data related to asylum seekers arriving in Australia. This project aims to visualise the Asylum seeker issue in Australia, educating and engaging a wide community audience about this topic. Due to the nature of the social issue and medium involved, a more specific target audience of 16-35 years olds, with limited knowledge in data visualisation, will be intended.

#reflection

Week 12- Another setback....

In this week's class, I got around to visualising all of my data circles based on my drawn diagrams. Now I just needed to apply colour to the design, organise the layout and select a typeface as well as other design considerations. Jo provided suggestions to help with these decisions such as for the display of the data circle keys. She also suggested that I use the typefaces Din or Rotis, swedish typefaces, which she believed would compliment my design. I felt positive in starting the design and having a more complete design artefact for the presentation next week.

However, I thought it would be best to show my data circles to my sister, just to check over and make sure that they were accurate. While my data and the way I displayed my data circles was correct/mathematically accurate, she felt that my method was not the best way to visualise them. I used the percentages of my data to be represented in percentages of the circle's diameter. While this method is accurate in comparing the widths of the circles, I found out when I showed my data circles to other people, that most people associate comparisons between circles as based on size of area, like what my sister suggested. So I spent all this week, working out the new maths involved for applying my data with circle area and then changing my data circles to accommodate this. I was also lucky this week to find a friend who helped me work out the ratio differences between the data circles, as now that I am displaying them for print, rather than screen, due to the immense difference between the number of refugees, compared with Asylum Seekers, displaying them literally in proportion would mean that my smaller circles would only be less than a cm in size as compared with a 30cm diameter for the largest circle! Unfortunately because of this little setback, I haven't had much time to work on a more defined design artefact for next week's presentation. But the maths is now finally correct!

In Wednesday's class, I also got feedback from another tutor, Grant about changing my project's concept statement to reflect the process that I have undertaken, rather than simply focussing on my design artefact. Its a different thought that I am considering. I am a little unsure but either way I will have to really think about my project statement for the monday presentation next week and see what he and Jo think about my project as a whole.

#reflection

More inspiration from the current 'Monographics' issue of IDN magazine.

#inspiration

Week 11- Implementing, Implementing & more Implementing...

Jo's lecture this week was really informative about the requirements for our major project assessment and it's exhibition in the graduation show. The considerations involved in how to display our work helped me to finally decide what format I want my major project to be. That is, I am now more certain that I am going to design each data circle set as it's own individual image/poster and then when they are all together, they from one whole larger image/poster. I am thinking about either A3 sizes for the individual posters (6 data circles in total) and together they would form a combined size of a little smaller than A0.

To get started in designing and implementing my major project, I drew up a more detailed sketches of each data circle to be designed in the posters, as shown in the earlier post. Before, I sketched these up, I was torn between whether to design different data circles for each data set (as with the Guardian- Days of the week data visualisation examples) or whether to design them all with the same data circle type (as with the Illinois Visualising Music: Word Usage examples)? I decided that I don't need to design different data circles for different data sets. I could, but in order to effectively show the interconnections and to allow for comparisons between my different data sets together, I thought it would be best to show them in the same style of data circles. Plus, as with the Illinois Visualising Music: Word Usage examples, the different data and colours of the individual data sets will make their circle visualisations vary from each other, to allow for effective comparisons.

When drawing up the detailed sketches of the data sets, all mathematically correct, I also encountered a 2nd issue about whether to do some of the data circles proportionally, that is each circle within a dataset is proportionally in size based on some of the data or another option was to design every circle within a data set as equal in size. In order to follow with this second option, I would have to change how some of the data sets would be shown. This issue is demonstrated with the 2 versions of the sketch, Data Circle 5- IMA vs NON-IMA. They look similar but they display some important differences. I got some opinions off my friends. They all agreed that the 1st option of displaying the circles proportionally to the data was the most effective in representing the data. With this issue resolved, I have now started to transfer these sketches into a final design document in Ilustrator. I hope to have at least two of the data circles absolutely complete before Week 13's final presentation and then the rest I hope to finish before the Week 15 submission.

#reflection

My sketches of my final data circles for design, all mathematically accurate/in proportion (except data circle six- top 5 origins, I didn't have enough room on an a4 page to make it in proportion).

International Paper Sizes

Illumination and knowledge flow together.

Data Flow, 2008, p8.

The information designer shapes an experience, or view of the data with a particular aim in mind. To clarify, confuse, inspire, redress and connect- all of these are legitimate intents for design, towards which the chosen visual presentation can be directed.

Data Flow, 2008, p6.

Every visualisation is an interpretation.

Data flow 2, 2010, p8.

The purpose of visualisation is insight, not pictures.

Ben Shneiderman in Data Flow 2, 2010, p7 & 8.

Week 10- Interim Presentation with Jo, Feedback & Selection

Although I missed the interim presentations in week 9, this week I finally had the chance to talk with my tutor Jo about my project. I showed her all three of my concepts and discussed each of their pros and cons. To summarise, because I didn't realise how long my last post was, here is a recap of my three ideas/concepts for my major project-

Option 1- Bar graph data circle

- Top down data (outward to inward).

- Aesthetically appealing.

- Data cannot be displayed proportionally due to immense disproportion between some of the data sets.

- Interactivity potential in interchangeable circles or quadrants that the user can move to compare different data sets but this depends on the accuracy of their proportions.

Option 2- Interconnecting data circles

- Top down (inward to outward).

- Series of interconnected datacircles that each display different data sets proportionally, so they can be accurately compared between each other.

- Allows enough space so different data sets can be visualised proportionally and thus reduces the proportion issue of Option 1.

- Interactivity potential in zooming in and out of different data sets, movement within a space for the user and/or movement/transition between data circles.

- May be more time consuming to complete as it consists of more circles to design.

Option 3- Reductive Grid

- Has no particular scale of presenting data, depends on user's choice.

- Grid of circles (or any other shape) which change colours to represent the different data sets.

- Most interactive out of my three concepts, allowing the user to select different data sets and also can easily present the movement of the data.

- But user’s selection of data sets is still limited to selecting only the categories that I set as the designer; they cannot compare different data sets outside of the two variables that I set up as options.

Feedback from Jo

Firstly, Jo ruled out Option 1. Because of its proportion issues, she felt that it was not an accurate representation of the data. She liked Option 3 but felt that its con, of not allowing greater comparison by the user between data sets, will significantly affect how accurately my audience will perceive the data. Option 2 she felt was the best concept in which to accurately visualise the Refugee/Asylum Seeker issue in Australia to my intended audience.

I also discussed with Jo about my interactivity issue. She said that it was no problem about dropping the interactivity component and just focussing on the visualising the data, because, as demonstrated in how long it took me to put my data together, this is already a big task in itself. Given the amount of time I have left, this is also a more achievable option. I must admit I felt relieved to hear this but I still feel that I need to have the interactivity in order to fulfil the requirements/complete an artefact for such a project; at the moment it doesn't seem enough?. But Jo was really lovely about it and reminded me that a big part of data visualisations is gathering and mining the data, which I have already completed for this project; so I have done a fair bit so far. She suggested that maybe if I still wanted to, in something like a future considerations section of my major project report, I could discuss the potential or how I intend to include interactivity to this project in the future. Maybe even as a part of an honours or masters project proposal? She also suggested a definite consideration that for this Option 2 concept of multiple interconnected data circles, I could maybe do a series of posters, one for each data circle and their combination together forms one larger image, which in the future could become screen based and interactive.... So many considerations!

But one thing is for sure...I have now finally passed the 'Select' stage! Woohoo!! I finally feel like I am making headway! Now it is time to start implementing my project and change my major project design statement to reflect these developments and refinement...

#reflection

Interactivity Considerations??

Interactivity in terms of-

- movement within a space?

- selection of data by the user?

- movement/transition between data sets?

- movement/transition of data within sets?

- combination?

Week Recess- Finally undertaking the Ideate and Prototyping Stage....

While I was collating and editing all the data together last week, ideas began to form on how I could visualise this data. My first idea (Option 1) was to have a data circle that would consist of interchangeable circles or quadrants, which the user would then be able to move and thus, individually compare their own data sets. This week, I drew a basic sketch of this concept to see how it could potentially work. Graphically, it is a bar graph data circle, demonstrating the data top down from refugees down to australian asylum seekers. While it looks aesthetically appealing, the data circles of this concept are not equally proportional due to the immense disproportion between some of the data sets, i.e refugee and asylum seeker world populations, compared with Australia's Boat vs non boat asylum seeker populations, etc. Because of this, I also am unsure as to how I could also make it effectively interactive.

I then tried to ideate other ways of visualising the data of my project. Looking at the categories from Klanton's 2010 book Data Flow 2, I was able to rule out datanets, dataprocess, datamaps and datacurves, due to the reasons that the data I am using is not qualitative (datanets), is not data that is collected over time (dataprocess and datacurves) and is not location based (datamaps). I also ruled out the dataesthetic category as the data of this particular project does not need to be explored in a 3D space. This left the categories of datalogy, datablocks and datacircles. Out of the three, I feel that datacircles is the most appropriate due to the complexity of my data and intended general public audience. Plus, I also have a little personal bias because I believe datacircles to generally be the most beautifully designed data visualisations out of all the categories.

So from this little investigation, I began to research into datacircle designs for inspiration (as shown in previous posts). I was particularly inspired by one design found in the current 'Monographics' issue of IDN magazine (2011, vol.18, no4.). Even though it doesn't look like a real data visualisation, more just an image, I liked how it was a series of data circles and they were connected and interrelated through lines and colours. So this inspired my sketch of my second concept (Option 2). This concept is a series of interconnected datacircles that each display different data sets proportionally, so they can be accurately compared between each other. This option allows enough space so different data sets can be visualised proportionally and thus reduces the proportion issue of Option 1. This concept also has more potential for interactivity than option 1. But it may be more time consuming to complete as it consists of more circles than my first concept.

Option 3 then came about as a way to simplify the data even more. It is a reductive form of this data, a grid of circles (or any other shape) which change colours to represent the different data sets, such as between world populations of asylum seekers and refugees or number of boat arriving asylum seekers vs. plane arriving asylum seekers in Australia, for example. To me at the moment, this option seems to be the most interactive out of my three concepts, allowing the user to select different data sets and also can easily present the movement of the data. But the user's selection of data sets is still limited to selecting only the categories that I set as the designer; they cannot compare different data sets outside of the two variables that I set up as options.

So far I am happy with the concepts I have ideated and basically sketched out/prototyped. Each have different pros and cons, so I will have to discuss these with my tutor Jo next week in order to select one concept to design for my major project. The only concern that I have now is regarding the interactivity component? At the start of the semester I was so keen for designing an interactive data visualisation/infographic, but now looking at the timeframe that I have left and the detail involved in designing the data visualisation itself, I wonder if I should drop the idea of interactivity all together? Even though it is a distinctive and large part of my project statement? I don't know. I guess I'll have to discuss all this with Jo and she what my options are...

#reflection

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

The Reflective Practitioner