Assignment 4

Credit: PsychTalkRadio.com
Credit: Psych Talk

In this assignment, you will create a narrative—tell a story—about yourself by visualizing the data you’ve collected on a tiny part of your life over the semester. Use course concepts, techniques and tools to showcase your data and convey your narrative. Interaction is encouraged but not required; static visualizations will not be penalized.

You might find inspiration for your work from these sources:

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As you explore the data you’ve collected, you’ll likely find some expected patterns as well as some surprises. It’s up to you to decide which findings to emphasize and share with your audience. Stay true to your data. And do not make up data.

Assume you’re designing for a general audience; as in, people who don’t know you intimately. Tip: Show a sketch or iteration of your visualization to a friend to test how well you’re meeting your objective.

Data examples

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  • Check-ins to different venues and places you go
  • Data about your workouts / from your pedometer (i.e. Fitbit)
  • Your daily weight
  • Food journal / Beverages consumed
  • Your public transportation usage
  • Where you spend money
  • Where you buy your coffee
  • How many hours of sleep you got
  • Who you spent time with
  • Rating on some scale of how you were feeling that day (good/bad, tired/alert, anxious/relaxed, etc.)

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Deliverables

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  • Your final visualization (include data through March 12th)
  • Your iterations (show these visually in your write-up or as stand-alone files)
  • A writeup (around 500-750 words, as a PDF) describing:
    • Your objective and intent with regard to viewers;
    • Your process, the iterations of your visualization, and how you constructed a narrative;
    • A challenging aspect (or aspects) of this assignment; and
    • Your final visualization
  • Create a zip archive of your files and name it: A4-LastnameFirstname.zip. [highlight]Do not include proprietary formats[/highlight] (.doc, .ai, etc.). Use standard formats (.pdf, .png, .jpg, .html, etc.) instead.

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Deadline

The assignment is [highlight]due on March 19th, 3PM[/highlight], by email to gpanger@ischool. Please talk to us before the deadline if you have any questions or need clarification on the requirements. Get started early.