Progress Review 1 – Friday 30th October
I thought it was about time that I started doing regular progress reviews. This is where I take some time to sit back from my work a little and review what I have done so far. Look at whats gone well, what hasn't, how I can improve my work and action tasks for the next couple of weeks. I expect these to come once every couple of weeks, but that may change dependent on the project. I will also try and develop a framework for these posts, though dependent on tutor feedback that may also change a little.
Work Completed So Far
I've completed a fair amount of work so far. This included the Project Proposal, some Initial Research into data visualisation and interaction, and some initial concepts for the artistic direction of the project. All my work has been well documented both in paper form in a DMP Folder, and here on the blog.
Evaluation of Work So Far
So far I'm pretty happy with the work Ive completed. I think I've got some good ideas about the project, and my research has been helping me clarify those ideas into usable action points for the project. I think Ive had a pretty strong idea in my head from the start about how I want my project to look, but feel I need to do some more work into final designs for this.
Action Plan
There are definitely some areas I want to start focusing on now we have reached the end of October. I want to continue and finish most of my secondary research in the next few weeks, and go about starting some Primary Research in the form of interviews with professionals and users alike. Id also like to go to some Visual motion displays though I'm not sure I'll get the chance to in the near future.
I also need to start working on a Prototype Animation soon. We are expected to show a version during the December poster presentation, and so far I've not thought much about the actual technology of project. I guess Ive been waiting for tutor groups to be organised before really thinking about this, and concentrating on the research aspect of my project.
Initial Sketches
Has it happens, most of my cool ideas for things seem to crop up when I'm doing something else. Its because of this I've started carrying a notebook everywhere I go, and have a pile of scrap paper next to my desk at home, ready for me to write/draw anything I may need.
The same applies with my DMP project, so this morning I scanned in some of the sketches I had made so far for the project. These first two where completed in the second workshop (9/10/09). As I was talking to the tutor and my peers about their projects and my own, It suddenly dawned on me how to do the project, as until then though I had an idea, it wasn't laid out in concrete.
The first image is a rough layout of how the entire installation would work, hypothetically speaking. It shows the user interaction with the animation on a computer at home, and then that interaction being streamed to a physical space, and presented though a projector.
There are 2 reason why i decided to do it this way. The first is lack of time, and 2nd is lack of technical capability. I decided I would have enough on my plate with building the animation and interactive elements to work out how to stream it over the net.
The second image shows an initial sketch of how I might want the animation to look, which I continued further with a second sketch last week (24/10/09)
This is my more refined sketch of the design, with a close up on the left, and with the accompanying notes on the right. As you can see its taken quite a strong influence from the artwork of Mark Weaver in my last post. I think the images speak for them self pretty well, but they clearly need refinement once I've done some more research into artistic direction.
Artistic Direction Ideas
Since I first thought about doing this project, I've had an idea in my head about how it should look. I was inspired by a post in Kitsune Noir's Desktop Wallpaper Project. It was this piece by Mark Weaver, which I've pictured bellow.
I just love this image. Its been my wallpaper for a few weeks now, and I'm still not bored of it. I quite like the 1940's - 60's feel of it, and the layering of different photos. I also think the colours work really well here, avoiding the stereotype blue sky in favour of a beige tint.
I think these aspects would lend themselves to my work. The aged feel would help communicate the impact of CO2 emissions on the environment. I guess I better start hunting for lots of old photographs 
Preliminary Research Results [UPDATED]
Yesterday I started some serious research into my Digital Media Project. I sat though and read the blog posts and I had found online. Bellow are the notes I made so far. I'll probably add another post soon with my continued efforts into research, and another summign up some conclusions.
How Might We Visualize Data in More Effective and Inspiring Ways?
http://www.good.is/post/how-might-we-visualize-data-in-more- effective-and-inspiring-ways/
- Every Visualisation should tell a story
- However often have limited time, so gist of story needs to be picked up right away
- What is that visualisations glanceability (http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-113.html)
- Displaying too many numbers is overwhelming,
- Don’t avoid altogether
- the story of visualizations should unfold as one reads into them.
- Lots of links to follow on this one – read up!
Fact and Fiction (and How to Tell the Difference) in Data Visualization
http://www.good.is/post/fact-and-fiction-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-in-data-visualization/
- ”When we introduce impact data to pictures, we tap into a deeply-rooted way humans understand the world, and we can inspire action—which is ultimately the point of measuring impact.”
- without a factual key or other clear guide that makes the image self-explanatory, data visualization can obscure understanding
- visualisations are often miss leading graphs can look massive, but only show a 0.8% gain (example)
The Use of Abstraction and Motion in the Design of Social Interfaces
http://bilgemutlu.com/wp-content/pubs/Mutlu_DIS06a.pdf
- Useful for ideas on how I expect users to interact with my installation, types of emotional response, future scoping
Toward a Deeper Understanding of the Role of Interaction in Information Visualization
Soo YI, J. Kang, Y, Stasko J, Jacko J (2007) Georgia Institute of Technology.
- Will be useful for defining the interaction my users will have with installation, using the Taxonomies of low level interaction techniques. Might also give me some ideas on new/refined features from my proposal
- Using the different category’s of interaction, I can see that the webcam element of my interaction is just really a bit of fun, and that the users ability to change the year and other settings will be just as important.
Project Proposal Update
Just a quick round up to finish of the work completed on my project proposal so far. I managed to hand it in on time on Thursday so quite happy with this. I hope to get it uploaded to the project page, along with the other work I planned to do next Friday.
I was pretty happy with my Project Proposal in the end. I started off having a lot of trouble writing it, but once i got in to the swing of things i found it quite easy to elaborate my ideas, and hopefully put forward a good concept to develop. I think for the first time in this project I'm excited rather than worried, which is nice.
Project Proposal
I started this post on Sunday morning. As it turns out, its now Monday Evening and I have (finally) finished my Project Proposal. Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to bring it home from uni today so I will have to wait until tomorrow to update the Project Page. I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about how I wrote the proposal, and some other bits and pieces I have started doing to help with my project.
When i first sat down to write my proposal I found it really difficult to be inspired by the project. I think this was because their where still to many "what ifs" in my idea. I found it really difficult to even describe the project, never mind think about its objectives. However, the workshop I attended on Friday really helped me pin some ideas down. Dan Dixon also suggest we use a set of questions to help us define our project. These where:
- Why are you doing this?
- Who for?
- What are you building?
- With ? (what are you using to build it?)
- How are you going to build it?
- When are you going to build it?
I found that working out the answers to this really helped me work out what my project should be about. I have decided to stick with my original Idea of using Carbon Dioxide emissions, and visualising this in a flash animation, using motion tracking though a web cam to make it interactive. I also decided to focus on this aspect of the project, and not worry about building it as an Installation, though that is still the final plan. I realised that I just wouldn't have the time to work out the installation aspect. But possibly could finish it by the time of our degree showcase.
I also took the opportunity on Friday to talk to James Ede, a professional flash developer I worked with whilst on placement last year. He was a real great help in working out all the components I needed, and even pointed me int he direction of some useful blog posts and example code for things that i would need, such as this Motion Tracking Example.
After all that I was able to sit down and finish my Project Proposal, a copy of which I will put onto the project page in the next few days. The other thing I have started doing is storing every useful paper or link I find about the project on delicious. This gives me a simple place to store all the information I find, and will also help me build my sources and references up when I come to start writing my final report.
My next task is to tidy up the last few spelling errors and hand in my Proposal. Once Ive done that the major research begins. This includes reading all the blog posts and papers Ive found on Data Visualisation and Interaction (Many of which have come from my Interaction Design module, which is handy). I have also started thinking about the artistic direction, and found some inspiration I will be sharing in a blog post soon. Ive also got to scan in some more planning documents to keep a record of everything Ive done, including some poor sketches!
Working Towards a Proposal
Today I've had some time after lectures to think a little more about, and start filling in a Project Proposal, a draft of which is due by Friday. I've been trying to clarify in my own head what the project might be about. I really need to do some more research and talk to some more people, which is something I need to do on Friday.
On the other hand I might just plump for it and go for my original idea. This is of visualising CO2 emissions in some way. My original concept in class last week was to have a scene of a park, with children playing or something, then as time increased (as indicated in one corner or something) smog would slowly fill the screen, until the scene was to hard to see, indicating when it was too much CO2 in the atmosphere. A quick google reviled that wikipedia had multiple pages with stats about emissions, and though I wouldn't use this as a source, it shows the figures would be easy to find.
But once I've settled on my chose source of data, I can in turn work on the design aspect's of the installation, and finally work out how people would interact with it. My thoughts on this thus far have been mostly leaning towards a webcam, that lets you change things in the animation. Like in my CO2 example, moving the smog around with your hands. Though, I'm not sure if this strictly counts as being interactive?
The other idea was using a flash interface on a computer, that allowed you to change the data going in. Say you reduced the amount of traffic in the city(just using a simple slider or something) and the percentage of smog would reduce, or something along those lines. Their could be a motorway in the background which has cars moving along it, and the amount of them could drop as well as smog clearing.
Whilst I'm thinking about it, listen to an artist called Smog, or Billy Calahan to his family. Amazing.
Anyway, these are some ideas about my proposal and Project. Hopefully by this time next week I'll have a much better idea about what I will be doing, what data I'll be using and how I want it to look (expect a design inpiraction blog soon!).
Project Planning Part 1
I had intended on planning my Digital Media Project during my Summer break between placement and uni. Due to various factors this didn't really happen, and I didn't start serious thought on the project until early September.
By this stage I had a few ideas floating about my head, and I decided to get these down on paper in the form of a mind map. The first mind map was just everything I had in my head about the project, put onto paper as quickly as possible, so I could evaluate each one individually and highlight my preferred projects, and scribble out ones I thought where frankly, a bit shit.
WARNING: These mind maps where not designed to be presented, and thus are mostly scribbles on scrap paper.
I decided to work on a second mind map that followed up in further details my favoured ideas from Mind Map 1 (Highlighted in red circles) I also followed a couple of new directions which would ultimately end up shapping my final project idea.
By this time we where due to go to the first of two timetable workshops to help us work on our project proposals. Before this we where given a draft copy of Module Guidelines. I studied this carefully to make sure my ideas would stand up to scrutiny from tutors. One of the appendix's was a list of project title suggestions. In this list, one caught my eye, "physical installation in a public space". It was something I wouldn't expect to see especially coming from a web design degree. It intrigued me, and i knew that this was something worth pursuing.
I turned up to the first workshop with 3 main ideas written down on project outline documents, and one blank one with "Digital Installation" written at the top of it. During the workshop we where encouraged to share with our peers our ideas and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each idea, and any difficulties we expected to encounter. Rather than use my sheet, I decided to just spiel off the ideas I had about a Data Visualisation installation using flash animation and live data feeds. The group liked the idea, and helped me formulate my own vision for it, so I quickly wrote it down on a Project Outcome sheet.
This was then past on to another group to be studied, and feedback offered. They suggested that i would need to add an interaction aspect to the installation, otherwise the project would be too simple. I thought this was a valid point and added it as a requirement to the project.
On returning from this workshop I quickly worked on my 3rd Mind Map of ideas, writing down everything that was floating in my head, and pursuing some ideas. Currently incomplete, it shows my ideas on my Data Visualisation Installation.
Using this mind map, and a further workshop at uni, I will need to develop my ideas into a finalised Project Proposal. I will start towards this before the next workshop, most likely with some more mind maps .
So yeah, a quick guide to my planning so far. I'm quite worried about my chosen idea so far as I have no idea how to do the technical side of the installation, with only basic experience with flash and app building, and no experience in art or installations, so much research will be required.
This post was written to the sounds of Rage Against the Machine, Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium .
The Inaugural Post
Hi there, and welcome to the blog. Thanks for taking a look. Everything’s a bit sparse at the moment as I'm just gathering all the data together and sorting things out. Once I start doing some proper work on the project the blog should start to fill up nicely.
Take a look at the about page if you need a little more info about myself and what I'm doing. The project page will have details about what I'm planning on researching and building during the module, so take a peek at that if you want to know more about that. As more things become defined and set in stone, I'll update the page with documents, definitions etc etc.