Data Gathering and Display:

For this project we worked as a collaborative group to make a set of stats and data into a visual concept with the aim of this visualisation making the data easier to understand.

Each member of the group collected data regarding energy consumption used at home. We each recorded how long certain appliances were being used throughout a 24 hour period.

As a group we then created a visual graphic ,made using string, of the data collected and came up with a 24 hour clock design.

Each member of the group was assigned a certain colour and we created a key to make it clear of which colour represented each person.

The concept:

The concept of the idea was that each person would show the times they used electrical appliances on the 24 hour clock.

This was visualised by each user placing there string from the centre point to the outside time to show when they turned an item on and it the went around the edge of the clock to the point where the user turned the item off. The string would the go back to the centre.

This example here shows the visualisation and shows that the user turned on the appliance at 21:00 and turned it off at 01:00. Therefore the appliance was in use for 4 hours.

Each user then placed all there data on the clock design using this same format.

This exercise can also be compared to the Pachube concept as the ideas both have similarities whereby data is being gathered and presented in a visual format to make sense of the statistics.

The key issue was, How can the work be used to enable audience interaction?

What can be explored?

Redesigned?

Made clearer?

Make it understandable/ give meaning?

What are the interpretations?

This is the digital design outcome i created from the initial string design made by the group as seen in the images above.

Initially i felt it was unclear as to which line showed the appliance being turned on and turned off therefore i created a design whereby the thick line would represent the object being turned on and the thin line would represent the object being turned off.

The use of a clock design also makes it a simple design to navigate as this is a familiar and recogniseable format.

The design allows many factors to be explored such as when appliances are used most and a which points of the day.

The data could then be narrowed down to one particular appliance and data could show which users uses an appliance the most during the 24 hour period.

The digital design format makes the design clearer as times can be added to show that it is a clock format and also the colours are clearer and the line thickness has been altered.

The use of the times added also add meaning and viewers can instantly recognise that this is a clock without having to be informed or study the design.

Initially the group who had to interpret our design did not recognise that it was a clock and when they redesigned the idea they placed horizontal lines across the circle and interpretated it as the length of each line is the length of time an appliance was used for.

Therefore the redesiging of the format and base structure makes it clear and apparent as to what the data is showing and how it should be read.