Tag: lasa-carlos

Data Visualization Workshop (Journalist)

What is your story?

We wanted to dig into the possibility that police divisions may be profiling certain races as stop-and-frisk suspects more often than they should. This hypothesis is based on some of the occurrences that happened in the last year that suggests police officers may be unfairly targeting African-Americans. As data journalists, we know this is a hot topic in the media and wanted to provide context on what we’re seeing in the Los Angeles region.

How does the selected data support your story?

Taking the top 11 police divisions that had the most number of stop-and-frisks allowed us to break down the contribution of each race as a % within the total number of encounters. This data showed us that there is definitely the possibility that certain police divisions are targeting African Americans more often than other races considering the racial makeup of their assigned neighborhoods. We need an additional set of data to confirm this, which would be the racial breakdown, by neighborhood, of residents over the age of 14 (a gauge for possible stop-and-frisk suspects). We would then compare our data with the racial breakdown data to see if police in certain divisions are unfairly targeting African-Americans (the % of African Americans in their stop-and-frisk encounters is higher than the % of African American residents in those neighborhoods above the age of 14). If this comparison did indeed show that certain divisions were particularly targeting African Americans, then they could be easy targets for division-wide training programs to help them recognize their biases.

What data did you omit, and why?

There are 25 police divisions that we omitted in order to just pick the ones that had the most number of stop-and-frisk encounters. Instead of just picking the top 10, we chose to also include the division with the 11th most encounters since it had a very large % of African Americans involved. As for the other data metrics, we felt that the police officers’ division and the race of the suspect were the most critical dimensions to evaluate based on our intended investigation.

How does the representation support your story?

The representation shows that there are a number of divisions with a very large % of stop-and-frisk encounters involving African American suspects. The data representation provides us with a clear starting point of divisions to investigate to see if they are targeting a higher % of African Americans than there are in their assigned neighborhoods.

What visual metaphor(s) did you use and why?

We want to present this data through a geographical representation as well so that our audience (readers of our journal) can easily identify what the data shows for their neighborhood. This is most relevant to our audience since it is a broader group that would be concerned about their location. We would want to also use the concept of small multiples to have a separate geographical representation for each race.

Gestalt Principles – Lasa

Here are my word associations for each of the emotional inputs:

Fierce & Dynamic: movement, angular, projectile, shooting, explosion, conflict, attack, barrage, chaos, expansion

Whimsical & Delicate: flowers, waves, nature, gentle, curving, magical, sprinkling, fairy, insect, water

Safe & Efficient: doors, protection, barrier, key, parallels, separation, sheltered, frictionless, ease, sleek

Unexpected Object: The Frisbee – An Unexpected Tool for Survival in the Wilderness

The Frisbee

Typical Associations: fun, entertainment, running, playfulness, wide open spaces, flight, novelty, single purpose, throwaway

Manipulation: The way I chose to manipulate the frisbee was to take it from it’s normal suburban environment, where the presence of many other objects reduces its usefulness to simply being a toy, then bring it into the wilderness, where the absence of objects transforms it from a tool for entertainment into a tool for survival. Among the many uses of the frisbee include – a plate, a vessel for collecting water, fanning the flames of a fire, a hunting tool to distract prey, a food cover, a paddle, shade from the sun, etc.

New Associations: utility, survival, adaptability, flexibility, multi-purpose, essential, ingenuity, creativity

IAWorkshop2016: DIBS (Iyer, Lasa, Nazar)

Mood Board can be found here: https://www.pinterest.com/carlooos/interface-aesthetics-ideo-workshop-mood-board/

> Who is your product made for?

Our product is made for someone who has newly moved in town, especially to a university town where there is no shortage of people selling stuff.

> What’s the existing problem? What’s the need of the user?

The existing problem is that there is a deluge of people selling stuff as well as an unseen queue of people lining up to buy these things. Existing solutions like Facebook groups (Free and For Sale) which are a lot more clearer and more trustworthy than Craigslist are still difficult to navigate through and it is impossible to understand if you have any chance of obtaining a product despite your reaching out to the buyer.

> How does your design solve for it?

Our design creates a dibs system that manages queues of users for a particular product. A user can call dibs on any product if she’s first in line but can get dibs if another user ahead of line drops out due to various reasons; some of which are through our system itself. We have a limit of three dibs per user so that the dibs actually translate to buys and do not obstruct other users.

> Walk us through the design flow.

The user sees a list of products on a mobile app and the interaction at the first layer is to call dibs or stand in queue with the availability of other meta information like distance from the buyer and the Amazon rating of the product being sold. Once the user calls dibs, she is prompted to talk to the buyer. But she can still browse through the rest of the list and call dibs on other products that she likes. In case she is not first in line for a product on sale, she can opt to stand in line. For such products the information at the first layer shows her, her chances of getting the product which is based on the anonymous usage patterns of those ahead of her in the queue, in the same way that her buying patterns would be used to decide the probabilities for those after her in the queue.

> How do you want users to feel when they use your product?

We wanted the users to think of this product as a quirky extension of Craigslist and hence, we went with a color scheme that reflects this mentality. We also wanted the browsing to be uninterrupted and the calling of dibs to be choosy and our main intention was to plot at the intersection of these feelings. This decided how we designed the navigation patterns for the application.

Carlos Lasa

I was definitely excited to participate in the workshop, trying to anticipate how my taste buds would react to the berry. Though I wouldn’t say that I was blown away by the experience, there were subtle changes to the taste of particular foods that did change how I perceived them. There were generally three buckets in which I could categorize the experiences I had tasting different things.

The first category applies to the very sour foods – vinegar, grapefruit, lemon and even the salt & vinegar potato chip – I found the taste to be quite palatable after eating the berry. The sourness or bitterness disappeared, which was very strange to me. The lemon tasted the best, it was like I was eating an orange.

The second category of experiences was the opposite of the first – foods that I thought would taste better tasted quite dull and uninteresting. Banana, dark chocolate, blueberry and jalapeno fell under this category. For each of those foods, I had very positive associations for each of them, all varying differently from one another. But after eating the berry, the all somewhat fell under the same camp. I associated the taste with soil, dull vegetables and earthiness. Whatever flavor that made it stand out before somehow disappeared.

The last category is for the foods that didn’t taste differently at all. I experienced this with the almonds, and with the cup of coffee I brought to class. I was expecting to be surprised but the only surprise was that they tasted exactly the same.

All in all, it was truly a unique experience but I don’t think that I would want my food to taste like this either once a year or all the time. If that were to happen, my world would be turned upside down because eating is a very personal experience and, as seen in the exercise, I have many emotional associations that I attach to certain foods. It would be as if I was a baby all over again, trying to associate new experiences to familiar foods.

Carlos Lasa

Part 1 – What does this object mean to you?

I have a large mug collection, but out of all my mugs there is one I use the most – this cafe mug from Crate&Barrel. There is no deep emotional significance or sentimental connection here, but there is something about the universality of the mug’s design that draws me to it. I feel that the simplicity of the design (clear, glass, no fancy etching or wacky print) allows me to use the mug when I’m in any mood, and whatever the contents of the mug may be they act as a medium that reflects whatever I’m feeling or would like to feel on the inside.

Part 2 (see below)

Part 3
1. What if we looked at all objects,people,thoughts, and things in the world this way?
By ‘this way’, I presume it means looking at things as vessels and deriving meaning from whatever they hold inside. I find this perspective to be a beautiful way to interact with the world as it allows you to look deeper, beyond the surface, discarding all superficiality and finding truth in what lies beneath.

2. When would we need to look at the world this way?
I believe that this way of looking at the world can be applied in all situations but would be best used whenever self-introspection is done or whenever there are situations you want to empathize with someone or some thing. Empathy is key in all things, most especially in design.

3. Has the meaning of this object changed?
At the beginning of this exercise, this cafe mug was just a mug that I used frequently. Now, it has taken on a different meaning for me. I’ll be a little more cognizant of the things I place in the mug and wonder now and then about how I’m really feeling during those moments.