| home page | data viz examples | critique by design | final project I | final project II | final project III |
https://preview.shorthand.com/OmrFH7vRAVEpA5C0
Since Part II, I have made quite a few adjustments to my data visualizations, particularly the bar graph representing my colleagues top motivations for listening to music. Here I changed the title to cue the audience in right away that mood and stress were the top 2 motivators for my colleagues. I also changed those two bars to a bright blue color and the others to a gray to highlight them even more.
I also adjusted the arrow colors for the modified dot plot (the one that shows stress levels before and after listening to music), to match the bright blue from the bar chart above. This helped to bring cohesion to the graphics as well as help the numbers/findings stand out a bit more.
The other big things I did was make sure that stand alone data points/shout out stats- mostly percentages, averages, etc- were large enough, bolded, and centered. Though these data points are not a chart, I want my audience to be able to see those points clearly, rather than hiding them in a paragraph of text.
The biggest change I made from Part II to III has been adding in the narrative text arround my data visualizations. My project topic was not an overly complicated one, but one that was personal to me. Because of that, the text I add in very much in a narrative/story telling form. And though this topic is backed by research, most of the research is looking into very specific elements, for example cortisol levels in saliva. For my audience, I wanted to make sure they knew that I had talked to people like them- which is why I decided to collect my own primary data.
After receiving feedback from Part II and after my 1 minute presentation, I understood that my Call to Action needed to be stronger. I linked the main sources I used in my research with a short description like ‘want to learn more about the iso principal- read more here’. I felt like this was a simple way to give my audience members quick access to learn more.
I also debated for a while on whether or not to add song suggestions or a playlist. A core part of my story is that it doesn’t necessarily matter what kind of music you listen to. For example, I might want to listen to a calm, classical piece of piano music to calm down and relax, whereas another person might need to jump up and down to Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake it Off’ (which I have been known to do a time or to as well). So if I was going to add links to music, I wanted them to be posed as a starting point of music that I like, some of my favorite genres and songs. Once going back through the finished shorthand, I could see that both of the links and embedded youtube videos really strengthened not only my call to action, but the presentation as a whole.
Because my audience is graduate students, I know that they are used to seeing high levels of research and data from a variety of fields. Because I am presenting this during finals week, and because of the complex nature of the results of research on my topic, I didn’t want to overcomplicate things. I wanted to put MY narrative at the center of my project and a simple, calm take away for my classmates- and maybe even one that could help them out during finals week.
I enjoyed working through this project. It challenged me to think outside the box when datasets were not immediately popping out to me. In the Arts field, we use quantitative data regularly, but I had a hard time finding this data in the exact format we had been using in class- excel or csv files that are already cleaned and ready to pop into a program like Tableau.
This project expanded my knowledge and proficiency in technical resources, like datawrapper and shorthand. This project also taught me to trust my gut. There were a few more abstract visualizations I wanted to include (like unit charts and dot plots) that I was struggling to create in Tableau and Datawrapper. And though I wanted to use these new technologies, I wanted to make sure that my data visualizations were actually ehancing my story and weren’t just the ones I could figure out how to do in Datawrapper. In other words, I didn’t want to limit myself to what the online tools could pop out. I kept saying to myself- if I could just draw this and have it look nice, that would be perfect. My decision to create these simple data visualizations in Canva was a break through for me and made me feel like I had more control over my story and graphics.
Overall, my project topic and call to action was fairly simple. But, it was highly personal and pulled on my own experiences and knowledge (as seen by the lack of citations at the beginning of my shorthand). I appreciated the feedback on my call to action and felt that I was able to strength it by providing various resources right at the end for my audience.