P2 Data Visualization

P3 Project Statement

Background

Formula D is North America’s first official drifting competition series that started out in 2003 by Jim Liaw and Ryan Sage. Where the fastest time is not as relevant as the execution and style. The “F” of Formula D symbolizes them as the first drifting championship to have factory backed teams, first official and sanctioned competition on city streets, first to be aired on national cable, and first to be filmed and featured in HD and 3D.

Target Audiences

Fans, car enthusiasts, ages 18-34

Objectives

To let target audiences intake data in a entertaining, modern and interactive way. They can achieve the knowledge of who qualified for the tournaments, who became champion and the overall standings of the tournament.

Obstacles

The social norm would assume drifting is another form of racing, on contrary belief, drifting is less about completing the course in a shorter time and more of impressive style, execution, and consistency.

Key Benefit

Interactive way to display statistics

Support Statements/ Reasons Why

The judging system will show that its not a race against time but the impressiveness each driver displays.

Tone

Engaging

Media

PDF/Web Application

Unit 8 Reading

Relation Circles are a design pattern that resembles that of a Circular design by having information or data interconnected that displays the relativity of each set of data. An example on the use of it would be the routes of a metro bus that it connects to.

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Information-Graphic--Bus-Ride-37-Mintutes/215694
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=772&index=772&domain=http://labs.vis4.net/parteispenden/


Bubble charts are similar to scatter plots, they use data to plot across like what looks like a X and Y axis grid. The difference though is, that instead of dots bubble charts uses circles or "bubbles" to plot data in a two-dimensional way. Color and size are also used to consider the quantitative variables.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Bubble-Chart/1385087
http://www.behance.net/gallery/Delhi-City-Level-Demographic-Data-Visualization/2030909

Unit 7 Reading

In Chapter 7 he introduces six interactive case studies; the first one "Virtual City Adventures" which talks about having buried treasures. If you have great content and it can't be found, it is useless and I find it like the analogy of audiences who are the pirates are unable to find hidden buried treasure. "Environmental Stewardship" is about trying to target their audiences needs. "Remembering the "Forgotten War"" is about trying to come up ways to improve ways to show physical displays/content in limited space. I find it interesting how they incorporated two medians to solve this problem. "Revitalizing a Brand" is about trying to reshape the image of Wilson Staff by incorporating CMS. A CMS would be a great way to manage a lot of content that would need to be updated. "Excavating Information" is about architecting information for audiences to be able to find additional information. Finally the last case study was "Speedy Cuisine" which is about a new fancy oven that they try to integrate emotion into, they did this by spending hours in the kitchen and trying to learn three levels of needs that included stated, observed, and the latent needs. I feel like this is a great way to soak in inspiration by emotionally attaching to the history and heritage of a specific product.

Relates to Speedy Cuisine with emotional as a tool for design

Tips on using CMS

P3 Preliminary Proposal

Interactive Data Visualization with The Formula drift standings

Interactive Data Visualization with MotoGP

Interactive Data Visualization with DJMag.com Top 100 Dj's

Unit 6 Reading

Thematic maps are usually considered as choropleth and symbol maps. They are good for representing certain data within a large space that has many areas (a continent with their countries, a country with their states, a state with its counties, a county with their cities, a city with their neighborhoods, etc). The type of data it may represent can be limitless to anything from numerical values, qualitative, categorial, etc. Some examples are like populations and election results. Thematic maps help with accurately visualizing certain topics in a certain area that belongs to a bigger area. Kind of like a big picture where you go into more depth in the finer detailed things within that.

Presidential Electoral Votes
Population of US State Capitols

Scatterplot are dots that are visualizing it like clouds that represents two metric variables. Its a mathematical diagram that would overlap each other dots but there are solutions out there to bypass this problem such as the jittered scatterplot (adding random values to each pair when a duplicate occur) and sunflower (applying a short stroke to each dot when spotting a duplicate) technique.

Age VS Size
Exercise per hour VS Machine owned per month

Unit 5 Reading

In the "Do's and Don'ts of Infographic Design" article talks about how infographic has become a strong design trait and a powerful tool to visualize massive amount of data over the years. Designing infographics takes a certain way of thinking to grasp onto the concept, not the same way as your typical brochure, website, etc. The first rule it represent is "Show don't tell" and a technique it suggests is keeping all text in one layer of the AI file then to turn it off to see if the whole design still makes sense with out the text layer visible. The second rule is that don't just use boring excel charts only, make it more visually appealing. Although typography has it uses it shouldn't be the main focus of the infographic design. The last few bits of the article are tell the story, visualizing the hook, think outside the box, wireframing the design, universal, and use a 3-color palate.

"10 Challenges Facing Information Design Today" is about how the author observed information design and came down with 10 challenges which include overproduction, misunderstanding, undervalue, fragmentation, scarcity, amnesia, misappropriation, commercialization, commodification, and de-humanization. I agree with the overproduction being theres a lot out there and when I try to find inspiration I don't always come across a good one. I somewhat disagree with the scarcity due to I am enrolled in a class that studies vastly on information design.

"Today In Horrible Infographics: 5 Keys to Creating Successful Infographics" the article first starts out with a bad example of infographic that features 5 key points; storify, visualize, simplify, timelessness and shareable. Although I don't think "storify" is an actual word but I guess I can understand them to kind of rhyme with simplify. The author was able to redo the design of the bad example into something that is clear and simple with a beginning middle and end.

A political campaign data visualization
http://blog.visual.ly/politics-and-visualization/

Resources for infographic and data visualization
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/11/25-useful-data-visualization-and-infographics-resources/

P1 Infographic Case Study

Click here to see the interactivity

Unit 4 Reading

Chapter 2: Process Discovery breaks down into different sections for different topics. "Wrangling Audience and Content" when your deigning information design you would want to tailor to your target audience by identifying and prioritizing, understanding the requirements that breaks down into emotional and physical. "Content Analysis" Where people wait for a mass of data to better inform of their clients to better plan a way of action like reviewing and analyzing, consider auditing relevant competitors, and so on. To be able to review the content to make sure you have all needed information, prioritizing the message towards its audiences. Planning for the long run and enough "firepower" to power through their designs. The next section is about the creative brief, which I am quite familiarized with from my previous classes such "writing for interactive media" and "computer drawing" where all our projects requires a case study which where the creative brief lies in. In the book it explains that there's a lot of debate what is the right type of creative brief but it all comes down to many variables such as who is the audience? Finally the last section topic is "Personas and Scenarios" which I am familiar with from my "writing for interactive media" class. I actually had fun creating personas, it was like creating a character for a story but instead of a story its for a scenario for clients to see the relevance within the products. It is a cost effective way to formulate the personas.


Use of Drugs by State
http://www.infochimps.com/datasets/estimated-use-of-selected-drugs-by-state-2004-2005/downloads/118816

Drug use by Type and Age
http://www.infochimps.com/datasets/drug-use-by-type-of-drug-and-age-group

Us Resident by Population and Race
http://www.infochimps.com/datasets/us-resident-population-by-region-race-and-hispanic-origin-2000

P2 Research

 The Piratebay  2008-2012 Dataset
http://www.csg.uzh.ch/publications/data/piratebay.html

2011-2012 NBA Season Summary
http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2012.html

2012 NFL Team Standings
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2012/

Unit 3 Reading

For the Unit 3 reading, Chapter  6 "Information Graphics Case Study" it goes over a series of case studies from different designers in a variety of different topics. Within each case studies the different designers gave their input and some advice and tips in designing infographics. Creating a strong relationship with clients is which I agree a good thing, when I design for my friends, I try to keep in touch a lot with updates and what not and help them understand what I go for and likewise I take in what they want into consideration. Making a complex inforgraphic to be able to let audiences who are not familiar in that genre understandable is I agree tough, for example my infographic on "how a turbocharger works" would sound complex to audiences who are not familiar in that kind of area, my job is try my best to clarify it and not to overwhelm them with information. I have the tendency to like being center of attention with loud bright colors. I am quite the same way in design. Although the case study for the "A Passion for Mapping" they suggested that to display a lot of information its best to subdue the color that way audiences can intake the information easier because too much color can be too distracting.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/awesome-free-tools-infographics/
Shows 10 tools to help with infographics.

http://www.thegraphicsranch.com/tips.php
some basic tips with information graphics.

Unit 2 Reading

In Unit 2's reading, "Design Toolkit". It goes over many tools that are available for the information design. The first tool was color, which the author explain that its the most basic and simple way to improve your information design. I agree with him, color will add some flare and group information clearly. Type styling is the next the tool, I find this can help audiences to find what they are looking for by skimming through headlines for example. Weight and scale is the next one, he explains that it having the weight and scale changed can show whats more important. I feel that audiences will comprehend it as "bigger is better". The next one on the agenda is Structure. I feel every design has a basic foundation, that here is where structure applies, for example like having a grid system to lay out complex information to be more legible. Next toolkit would be grouping where I agree that this can help readers realize the importance or certain groupings and visual hierarchy plays the role of that. Graphic elements which is one of the older ways of information design is something that history has taught us how to convey complex information to audiences in a simpler manner. I also find Imagery to be a powerful attraction to reel in readers, especially ones with shorter attention span. However above all else sound and motion would be the most eye catching element but can also be one's downfall for being too distracting.

http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2012/09/14/guidelines-designing-audio/
this one relates to the audio part of the reading.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/14/the-dos-and-donts-of-infographic-design/
this article relates to many of the topics that were pointed out on the reading.

P1 Sketches

P1 Competitive Analysis/Inspiration

P1 Project Statement

Background

HKS began tuning gasoline-powered engines in a farm shed at the foot of Mt. Fuji, Japan. They had a dream to build high-performance engines that OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) dared not produce. In 1974, that dream came true as Hasegawa built and engineered the first commercialized turbocharger kit for passenger cars. 

Client

HKS USA

Target audience

Automotive enthusiasts and professionally sponsored race cars.

Objectives

To provide visual illustration of how a turbocharger works 

To provide a step by step process of how air goes through the intake/turbo/exhaust

To boldly represent the credibility of HKS as the leading high performance company

Obstacles

To differentiate the temperature of the air that goes through the process of the whole exhaust system

To clearly show the process without cluttering the who infographic

Key benefit

The visual explanation can help automotive enthusiasts who are interested but don't quite understand how the it works in a simpler and clearer way to comprehend.

Tone

Interactive, knowledgeable, and entertaining.

Media

Web, PDF.

Unit 1 Reading

In the first chapter of the reading "About Information Design" it goes over topics such as who practices it, the reason why we need information design, the related fields that incorporate information design, how it is ubiquitous, how it gained great importance as civilization progressed, and so much more. The lists of people who practices information design are graphic designers, information architect (IA), interaction designer, user experience designer (UX), usability specialist, human factor specialists (ergonomics), human-computer interaction interaction specialist (HCI), and plain language expert. It is ubiquitous because you see it in railroad signage, maps, websites, brochures, instruction manual, ballots, exhibits (libraries, museums, science centers), books, product assembly, and automated phone systems. The world are publishing over 3,000 books daily, in the English language today it consists of 540,000 words which is five times more than during Shakespeare's time. The information within the New York Times Contains more information than a person in the 18th century would come across. Back in the old days Americans only had access to local newspaper and have only two to three tv stations. The exponential growth of technology is so rapid that it is also gave light to designers and created more design interface opportunities like personal computers, mobile phones, PDA's, MP3 Players, and so much more! Information design is also very cost efficient by helping thoroughly thiking through all of the issues that lie within a project.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662261/the-future-of-information-touchscreens-everywhere-video


http://michaelbabwahsingh.com/2012/03/02/10-challenges-facing-information-design-today/

P1 Information Sources

-How turbochargers work

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/turbo.htm
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/4306310

-How breather mods work (intake, manifold, headers, test pipes, exhaust)

http://store.newlevelmotorsports.com/faandmyabafa.html
http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/header_basics/viewall.html
http://www.squidoo.com/do-performance-parts-really-work-auto-parts-online
http://www.modified.com/tech/9912scc_intake_exhaust_systems/
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/nissan-350z-design4.htm

-What consists in the Paleo diet (also known as the cave man diet)

http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2010/10/04/the-beginners-guide-to-the-paleo-diet/