Visible Data

To kick start the Visible Data task we was firstly told to monitor our daily uses on our electrical products in our homes. This process was continued over a week period from Tuesday 25th September 2012 - Monday 1st October 2012.
The two rooms I focused on in my household were my Kitchen and Bedroom, in each room I measured the length of each product by Hours and Minutes while recording the following into my notepad.

Example From my Note Pad
Thursday 27th September 2012
Kitchen
Washing Machine - 2 hours
Dryer - N/A
Fridge - 24 hours
Oven - 35 minutes
Radio - 20 minutes

Bedroom
Lamp - N/A
Charger - 1 hour
Laptop - N/A
Light's - 6 hours

Leading onto the continuous week we was placed into different groups, in my group was held the members of Oscar,Chole and Sharin where amongst our self we shared our collected data.
The plan of action for the developing task was to design a interface for the audience to interact and put there own data into.
From this brief we all voiced our opinions on what kind of designed interface we would like to produced.
1st Idea
* Inner circles representing a day
* Sectioned parts representing the products
* The length of string representing length of time

As a group we decided that we could push this 1st Idea further so we carried on discussing more ideas and came up with the following idea.
Idea 2
* Different string colour's representing the days
* Categories starting from each V point
* Scale inbetween the V-necks

When designing our Interaction to help us see the process and development of our ideas we was screen capturing the software. These screenshots began to build up and as a group we could edit and reflect what design we should use for the presentation. This was a good system to use for documenting as a group.

At the start of the feedback process our group was struggling to start with the interaction system as we was not understanding the key directions which was given to us. The con of the interaction was the key which was given to us, it was using a math method working out the percentage of the room to find the perimeter which will lead to your answer for watts. I myself is not very good at maths and therefore I was would struggling to figure out what pin I should move first which was very time consuming. The pro's of the system was challenging our group and if we didn't understand the direction of the interaction we could always use our own system. Which left the interaction very flexible and opened for the public.

Key which was given: 1% for each room

When receiving feedback for our own interaction we was told the following points. 1) The interaction system was to small to use. - As we based our interaction on a small A4 printed white paper it was difficult for the audience to input their information and the system became very tight and squashed. This problem could off effected on the results for each persons collected data. 2) Couldn't put meter readings on the interaction - We didn't consider the audience which collected meter readings as a group we just design the inputted of hours in the day. The readings only went up to 10 hours which was a disadvantage for the public as many collected data which was 24 hours use i.e the fridge. 3) On the key instructions we stated that they must use a different string colour each day but never stated what colour to use, this left the system opened and flexible for the audience.

If we were to design this interaction system again we would focus on questioning and producing testers so we wouldn't come across mistakes which was given to us in the feedback discussions. As I fully enjoyed this task I decided to continue looking into Visible Data & Display by firstly researching into some designer's that have used this process.
The designer I came across was Micheal Mcandless http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/about/
David McCandless, is a London-based author, writer and designer. He has written for The Guardian, Wired and others. He claims he is into anything strange and interesting.

Colours in Culture by David Mccandless

The following are 3 examples of Designer's that use Data Gathering and Audience Participation.
The first design website I research was NikeI.D lets the audience make a personal by allowing the public to interact on the website choosing their own colours/material and blank canvas. The interaction website also allows the audience to create a colour combination plate that allows teams which are used for sports to create their own style but still have a colour system.
Below I have documented screenshots of myself testing the interaction and what options that can be given to the audience.

The second interaction company I have chosen is TalkTalk which are a advertisement company based on itv who sponsor
x-factor. Recently TalkTalk have produced a interactive video record system where the public can record themselves singing and edit it on a video maker. The audience can then send their edited music video into TalkTalk which the producers will then select a variety to be broadcasted on air before and during x-factor.

The third design company I have chosen is Monzy who are a siggraph interactive entertainment system that allows members of a large audience to control an onscreen game using red and green reflective paddles. This technique allows hundreds of members of the audience to participate and move left to right in their seats. The company places a camera in front of the auditorium and points it at the audience to encourage the audience which way they should move to beat the other competitive on the game PING PONG.

Development on chosen idea

Audience interaction

Drug Data
In the course of preparing and researching the images, I came across a ton of interesting facts and figures about the drugs world. They’re all in this spreadsheet.

Created Data Gathering of the Violence that is used in video games that most underage boys play at home in their bedroom. When first seeing this I was shock at the amount of games contain killing and guns but get the most players.

This is one of my favourites collected data by David Mccandless which is a collected data graph of how many females use the social networking site and what website is the most popular.