3:30 am update

I thought I'd post a screenshot of what I have. This is displaying the schools, population density, and crime rates. I don't think I'll get to doing hospitals before tomorrow morning when it needs printed. The density took forever to finish. I'm going to start working on decreasing/increasing population now.

Hi Everyone,

Thought I would show some screenshots of progress so far.

Base layer design

Tried to add this last night, but sometimes Blogger won't let me post photos. More to come later.

Hey, I have made some big changes, I think this is going in a good direction. I decided to take the idea of height of a stack of $100 dollar bills and compare that to objects... the animation will demonstrate the change in scale.

Flash wireframe

Problems with scale

Hi Everyone,

Part of my goal is to show just how vast the differences in wealth between people (even among those we consider rich) can be.

Because the range is so vast and hard to get a grasp of, I tried comparing "your" salary with those of the rich and plotted it against time. Many of you did not really see the connection and suggested that I use objects or something more concrete or tangible. Things you can buy, etc.

What I keep bumping into is that the scale of these things is vast. I'm struggling in determining how to show things other than numbers but I don't think piles can convey that. Let me show you what I mean.


Here is a bar graph of most of my celebrities, as you can see, Oprah and George Lucas tower above the rest, and its hard to even tell the difference between some of the others (this is number of Bentley's they could buy in a year with their earnings)


And here is what happens when you add someone like Bill Gates:



The people who were towering before, George Lucas and Oprah become tiny, and everyone else drops off completely. So the problem is that I end up having to change the scale of the chart in order to see differences. Maybe I need to do some zooming? But I think the idea of showing piles of money or stacks of yachts just won't convey correctly? Anybody have any thoughts?

Jim

getting there...

I'm going to have to have a key I've decided. So here is what I've been thinking.

Design work

Here is a sketch of one "branch" of my food map. For the final piece, I plan on having five different "branches" representing a range of foods. Here you can get an idea of the design scheme and typography. The first picture shows all of the type I scanned in and vectorized using Illustrator.

I want to fade different colors into each other for each branch instead of just the branch. I have an idea of how to do it but haven't tried it yet.

Representation and color problems

I thought I'd upload what I've been working on because I've been running into a few problems and would love some feedback. My first problem is representation. So on the maps below, the peachish dots show population density, the brown overlay shows crime rates per neighborhood, and the pencils show elementary schools. My large representation problem is the schools. I want to differentiate between elementary, middle, high, and universities. Universities definitely can't be the same as an elementary school. So right now I have pencils and I don't like them at all. I'd like something a little less literal for this map. I was thinking about just different shapes but that would get into the idea of having to have a key. I also thought about using the tip of the pencil only for something maybe. I don't know.

The other big problem I have deals with colors. I can't get a color palette to work well. If I stick with colors that somewhat relate to the data I'm showing, they don't go well together. If I just choose colors that I like and I think look good together, it doesn't make sense.

So suggestions would be awesome.

Finally found a good way to represent time

Hi Everyone,

Well, I had lots of input from people here and from my HCI friends. I think I've finally hit on a something that will accurately show time and the scale I'm wanting to convey. Now, instead of it just showing you a number of years (which no one seemed to like) it moves you back in time. Famous dates fly past and a counter keeps track of the years, kind of like a time machine. What I like about this is that if physically shows the distance between you and the celebrity, and as they shrink on the horizon, one realizes just how far away their wealth places them from you.

I don't have a lot of inherent artistic ability, so these screenshots use icons that I found as a way of mocking things up. :)



I also worked on some sound design, and came up with this for the sound that happens once you press "Start Working".

Short Trip mp3
Long Trip mp3

The Right Representation

I admit that when I picked this topic, I already had at least a vague concept of how I want it to work. I am very much inspired by the work of Ben Fry (you can see some of it at his website at http://www.benfry.com/ in case you’re not familiar)—he is, in fact, the reason I decided to get a CS minor. I like the way in which he does information design by combining graphic design with programming skills, so that information that is constantly updated or changing can still be accommodated and made easier to process.

I wanted to do something similar, which is why I picked a topic with a lot of statistical data that, at least in theory, could be programmed to be updated as new data comes in. For this reason as well, my mental concept of how the finished product of this project should look is something along the lines of a dynamic chart or bar graph.

Because there is so much information, with levels of hierarchy where some information is more important, I want to give the user the option to add layers (or levels). I think the starting layer should be limited to just human population growth over time. Then, like adding layers of transparency paper, the user can add other layers and levels of information—more about population growth (for example, the birth rate), or information from the other 2 categories (environmental degradation and adoption rates). Some provisions will have to be made to accommodate the fact that some of this data will have different scales (for example, number of births vs. degrees of average global temperature increase), but the unifying factor would be time—for most of the data, I have been able to find at least approximations dating back to around 1900. So, it is quite possible to compare the data even across different scales.

I guess my biggest issue is not so much figuring out what to do next—I have at least a few ideas for that—but wondering whether I should’ve been exploring more options as to other, less graph-like representations of my data. That’s the one problem with coming into a project like this with more than just a vague idea of what you want to do and how you want to do it—it becomes harder to see and explore other options. That’s part of the reason why I haven’t posted as much recently; I’d been trying to take a step or two back from the project and see if taking a “mental break” would allow me to see some other possibilities for representing my data. But I guess I’ve come to accept the fact that this is the only solid representation I can foresee working for me and the nature of the information I am trying to display, and that at this point I just need to work on moving forward.

I have a few rough sketches of ideas, but my scanner is not cooperating. I’m going to try to start working more on the computer within the next few days, and I’ll post some of that work as I make more progress. For now, any suggestions or feedback so far would be very helpful.

Progress

Here are some images of my progress and ideas. The first image is giving an idea of population density in Pittsburgh neighborhoods. It is focused on "persons per square mile." The lighter the color, the less "persons per square mile." I may need a key for this, but I'm giving it a try without.



The second image shows if the population in Pittsburgh neighborhoods is increasing or decreasing. So far it is mostly decreasing. I'm wondering if I need the person on all of them or just here and there in the larger ones. That way it is less cluttered. So some would have person and arrow while smaller areas would only have an arrow.



The third image is combining the previous two.


There will also be an image showing schools, hospitals, etc and one for either crime or housing. The last image shown will be a combination of everything.

I am working in print so I thought maybe I could have a book and when it opens the back shows the Pittsburgh map and then there are overlays on each side that can be overlapped and interacted with. Because of the way it is set up (an overlay on all sides of the square) people can mix and match what information they want. There will also be an area with all of the neighborhood names somewhere. The sketch below shows my possible layout.

coming soon....

Hey guys. I just wanted to check in and let you know that I have not forgotten this class. I've been crazy busy, but I will have sketches up later today that show where I am headed. These will consist of different layers of information as well as how my print piece will interact.

Progress and Ideas

I also have an updated digital version of the tree but blogger isn't letting me upload anything else right now. These are sketches of my current idea for how to make this work as a print piece. Basically, you have the main "food tree" and then transparent overlays that you can combine where each overlay has the restrictions for an individual diet. I think this would allow the viewer to make connections between different diets.

working on scale

I decided to pick a bunch of interesting points from human history and use them on a timeline to help get a sense of scale. Then I plotted them all on a chart to get an idea of just how big I needed to make things. Wow, Bill Gates make a LOT of money. (minimum wage would take you 300,000 years. Attached are pics of the spreadsheet and the chart I cut out and tried to fiddle with ways of how to display this info. 

mockups and sketches

I'm going to repost the celebrity mockup I did earlier for feedback, I've also been pursuing a very abstract version of the disparity of wealth in the US. 

For the disparity example, I've tried not to use any words, though it seems like it may need some explanation. The large circle at the top shows the amount of wealth that the top 10% owns. The smaller circle beneath it shows the amount of wealth that the bottom 90% owns. In an earlier version of this (not posted) I had computed the area of the circles based on their diameter - which I think was wrong - the example posted uses the area of a circle, which I think is more accurate. (I was getting just giant disparities before) 

I've also been inspired by all of the bank failures in the news lately, and have done some pencil sketches of the "faces of welfare," comparing the bailout of people normally associated with welfare and CEO's of failed lending institutions that now need the government's help.

A few new sketches

Hey guys. I don't have a lot done but I have some and I'm still working. Here are a few new sketches just to show employment. I'm still working on a couple. The idea is that I can use these as icons overtop of some other map. I'm thinking that I'd rather have people though. So hopefully soon I can work on icons with people doing the particular job. That seems more emotional and personable to me.

I've printed out a map with Pittsburgh topography. I'm hoping to layer other elements over this (such as employment and population). Still working on this aspect.

I'm still struggling with making this a more emotional piece.

Anyways, here are a few of the icon sketches I started, but they will definitely change as I want the person in with them.




Here are images of the maps that I'm referring to. I plan on doing my own map with a different take on elevation.

A non-scientific classification of the American kitchen

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Here's a quick sketch of the one "branch" of the tree, seen in the context of two different diets. A few things I am running into are that I can't fit all of the names of the food into the tree two dimensionally-- I'm considering trying to create depth in the tree, although this would work better in a digital format so you could move around and see the tree from different angles.

I'm also wondering how I can represent all of this information for each diet at the same time- so that the viewer can the mapping of two or more diets at the same time and see what foods overlap or what parts of the "tree" tend to be more safe overall.

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Here is a quick (well, messy, but not quick) sketch of the idea I had to classify food. I want to use color to denote the "safeness" of each food for different diets, but I haven't put together examples yet. I have a few ideas, but for now here is this piece- see what you think.

FYI, I think I'm going have this piece be a bit tongue-in-cheek, as you might be able to tell.

Sketches

Here are some initial sketches for population, housing, and employment and occupation. I haven't ordered them from abstract to literal yet.

Some symbols

Here's a start on some icons representing different diets. I kept running into problems because the things I'm representing are pretty broad topics, and it's hard not to narrow them down too much.

I'll try to work on some more interesting ideas in the coming days.

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I found this website that I might collect some data from, even though it's a little late. Basically it has nutrition information for 13,000 foods (it's off of the USDA website). I found the "key" they provided to explain the food codes- it has a fairly complete list of all types of foods that I could work from as well. It's pretty cool anyway if anyone wants to check it out.

http://199.133.10.140/codesearchwebapp/(mqh4bfv4ghhohu55ikx5erny)/codesearch.aspx

Pics from abstract to Literal

Attached are various pics I've done mapping concepts from abstract to literal:

Haves vs. Have Nots



Annual Income



Gross Domestic Product



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Sounds -

1. Descending bells I recorded... could represent either depth or weight
Bells

2. Coins - these are sound of coins I recorded: 1 coin falling onto table, coin into a cup, lots of coins falling onto table, lots of coins into a cup.

Coins