Compare them and see if you can understand anything:
This is the current stage of visualization that is part of the S.Lab project. Just to give an idea: The first screen is the screensaver on an iPhone. Each circle represents one family member. It gives a basic overview of their environment and health of each family member. The bands stand for various dimensions: health, activity, their physical space and proximity.
The second circle expands the anomaly of one such circle. And the third further opens up into more sub-divisions.
I have done multiple iterations before reaching here. Yet I could see many unresolved issues.
Challenges:
- How do we create it in such a way that the viewer at one glance understands the physical and physiological environment of each person? The problem here is that we can see each variable in isolation but cannot see the potential correlation between them.
- What sense the viewer gets in reading this? Initially I wanted to do away with any kind of graph, but the amount of data we had present plus the fact that we are not interpreting the data, led us to retort to the graph format.
- How friendly and unobtrusive does it look? The colour schemes used so far hasn't helped so far. They seem to be a bit sterile.
- And lastly, one of the important criteria was not to turn this into a task. So we wanted that the screensaver helps you glance at your family members. Only if you are interested, do you probe deeper. In such a case, how is the information to be presented? And can we give them the option to play with the settings?
And just to take inspiration, I read few stuff:
- Envisioning Information, pg. 67: This book is written by Edward Tufte. He refers to something called small multiples. 'At the heart of quantitative reasoning is a single question: Compared to what? Small multiple designs...answer directly by visually enforcing comparisons of changes, of the differences among objects, of the scope of alternatives. For a wide range of problems in data presentation, small multiples are the best design solution.'
- http://dataremixed.com/2012/10/interactive-visualizations-or-small-multiples/: This website is a nice compilation of few such examples. Though I don't fully understand either the games or know anything about the players. But what I liked here is the interactive visualisation. It lets the user to see what and how they want to see.
Hey, I know it might be a bit late for suggestions. But hey, here is my opinion:
ReplyDelete1) "The problem here is that we can see each variable in isolation but cannot see the potential correlation between them." This is because we have not set our targets clearly. If someone is using the app, he would usually see people's bubbles just floating around. Individual colors would of course have been collaborated on basis of values of physical parameters. It looks good just as it is now.
All this information would benefit the app user if it can mark out a situation in which users help/interaction might be required. For example, in case someone is in danger and skips a hundred couple of heart beats, the bubble might increase in size and start blinking as an alert.
2) Why are you not interpreting the data? Defining acceptable boundaries could vary from person to person, but a customization module could directly be provided to the user itself.
3) Colours do look friendly. I am not sure if they are sterile as you feel about them. Have you finalized on a design?
4) See, I think we can have multiple view types. One could be grid based, list based or tree based. This would be a great way to A/B test the best way to present information. Also, navigation amongst various levels of hierarchy needs to be made foldable and easy.
What are your thoughts on the feedback and how is the project shaping up?
Cheers.