Week 4: Complex Simplicity – Projecting a new perspective
Weekly learning objectives
By the end of this week you should be able to:
- Define and distill your creative investigation to develop a successful piece of data visualisation.
- Develop and design a piece of information graphics that effectively communicates a scientific, cultural or environmental story using innovative ideas that embrace risk and question the boundaries of the discipline.
- Develop and make a final piece of information graphics that uses relevant tools, skills and techniques to communicate the message effectively.
- Reflect on the reference material provided in the lecture and elaborate further on your Research Journal.
- Collaborate through group discussions on the Ideas Wall.
Lecture introduction
Last week, we looked at the effectiveness of information design to communicate a message. This week, we will highlight the importance of context, and introduce research bodies and trend forecasters that exist to help you communicate effectively.
In this lecture, you will:
- Identify the many facets and aspects of a data set that must be understood to project an appropriate and unbiased vision of an information story;
- Understand the importance of understanding the context, in which your audience perceive your information, to create a meaningful piece of information design;
- Explore how current trends, political viewpoints and technology can be reviewed and incorporated to envision the information in an appropriate way;
- Highlight research bodies to help you to unpack specific trends, insights and specifics of visual language. These research bodies exist to enable your information design to be communicated effectively.
- Explore trend forecasters, such as Future Laboratory, who can help you understand new or emerging consumer groups and insights.
- Highlight the growing body of work around data analytics and visualisation, which is a highly specialist area of creative and scientific collaboration.
Week 4: Workshop Challenge
The Challenge
This week we want you to explore your own methods of communicating a story through information design. You will be assessed on the visual impact and also the effectiveness of your communication. Take stock of what you have learned about data visualisation and the importance of clarity. Please consider the format and materials used, which can help tell your story.
- Source a scientific, cultural or environmental story that matters to you.
- Create a piece of information design to communicate its information and reveal a new insight.
The Challenge(s)…
It starts out as a bit of fun or curiosity. Setting the Garmin on the road bike before a club ride the main data I’m wanting to track is the miles, the average speed and the top speed which made me feel like a missile.
Others in the club started went on to heart rates, watts and calories (though it is nice to know the calories I burned off, the cake at the end of the ride sticks a few back on), spending hundreds of pounds of better trackers and other bits of kit to generate some numbers as if they were riding the Tour for Team Sky.
It develops into an obsession:
Scribbles are quicker…
Following on from the Ideas Wall post I think I’ve narrowed things down to a more defined field to follow.
If I follow the average BPM heart rates for 60 mins x 24 hours x seven days I should be able to track a pattern which can be attributed to what’s going on during the peak rates. Colour-coding the numbers low to high should create a pattern across the page.
The notes below might explain things more clearly…
I’m into my second day of wearing my son’s Fitbit and I already found myself thinking how great all this data must be. I can log all by brews through the day, it tells me when I need to run upstairs (to fill the kettle, two birds-one stone). I’ve even found that if I link the stats to a life policy we have I can reduce my premium, if it tells them I’m eating enough fruit, etc.
I’m starting to think my resting heart rate’s a bit high…
Heart-rate Block
Visualising the week as minutes would mean a timeline of 10080 units – it would be a pretty long timeline…
Instead I planned on a block of hours x days but this became too complex to follow, the path of the information was left to right/right to left on alternate rows. This, and the large block of heart shapes played trick on your eyes and you lost track of which row you were counting. I introduced colours to represent the differences in BPM but again, it was easy to lose track of where you where.
This would need a huge key to explain what the viewer needed to do, things needed to be a lot simpler to understand…
Heart-rate Timelines
Simplified down and down. Hearts are shown in-scale to their BMP at the time of recording along the line. Each point along the line is a block of 10 minutes, though I haven’t added times as text – I think the viewer will realise the line represents block during the day once they read the descriptions of what’s happening as it starts with a description of ‘sleeping’.
I’ve kept the hearts all in the same colour, again, to simplify as much as possible. I also think this shows the size differences more clearly. If different colours were used then there would be the need for a key to explain those differences.
Peer Feedback
Some good suggestions were made during tonight’s webinar. The one which stood out for me was to try a circular timeline instead of it being flat, this will make the info more familiar as a reference to time – looking like a clock (even though it’ll show 24 hours instead of 12).
A colour key was also suggested – I’ll give it a try but still feel it might need explaining…
Feedback results
Circular timeline – looks better as a single day, as a group they look little too separate as self-enclosed units?
The spare area could be used for a key or short story.
Could a pattern fit into the ‘8-8-8 rule for living’
Refs:
https://medium.com/we-talk-it/apply-the-8-8-8-rule-for-living-a-balanced-life-df62426752b7
Feedback and Reflection
The comments from our Critical Feedback Session:
Great rationale and approach to the task. Meaningful and interesting way of creating primary data. How to use an alternative to the heart icon rather than scale. This could be more of a quantitive measure without the ambiguities of scale. Look at ISO type for instance.
An alternative could mean having to introduce explanations if the difference isn’t shown by scale = more.
Could you overlay the type like you have with the data?
Is linear the right format for this? Simplicity and clarity – how can you get that into it? Use tints to show intensity.
Could see the heart infographic scrolling vertical with the heart and text the same orientation. Like the idea of having the different days side by side. Really clear and coherent, nice effective colour palette.
The symbol of the heart is a bit of a love cliche, rather than heart health. Could you use a more anatomical representation of a heart, or could you find a symbol that represents stress of excursion – does this look too much like you really fell in love at the post office?
An anatomical representation might not be so obvious as the ‘love heart’, everyone recognises the symbol as a heart. As for falling in love at the Post Office, that would depend on the staff working there that day…
Maybe include the teas in the graphic?
Having a graphic to represent what the activities are would maybe add interest and make it more informative, but again, a key would be needed to explain their meanings. Currently I think the basic level of information needed is covered by a scaled heart.
I think it could be pushed a bit further to be visualised in a richer way than along a line but the data and the concept are bang on!
A richer visualisation would be necessary if the information was being used to back up an article or as an infogram explaining data in a presentation perhaps. In this case I wanted to see how simple it could be without losing meaning.
