Looking at other forms of Data Visualization.

I'm here to review a fellow colleague's own project for a Data Visualisation/Infographic project. His can be found here and it differs quite a lot from mine.

I used a highly analytical data set. Monitoring stress levels among students, quantifying them, trying to correlate them with other school factors, and trying to see what can be done about it was rather laborious if I am to be honest. With that said my colleague did not use such an analytical data set but rather decided to explore something more lax and 'fun'.

Using his own music library on iTunes he decided to graph and trend his musical preferences throughout 6 major genres over a number of years. The layout and design of the project is simple and therefore effective. It makes for easy readability and invites the user to traverse the piece comparing between different genres of music that were played.

The project was created with using the Processing platform (as was mine) and so he coded aspects of interactivity within the piece. If a user mouses over one of the white dots they are able to see more information on the genre ie: how many times songs that are categorized within that genre are played. It is easy to see the musical transition that occurred throughout the years that are presented. For example if  one were to click on the Lounge dot for 2012 it would notify the user of the genre, year and play count. In the particular case it would be: Lounge 2012 120.0. Which means that in 2012 120.0 Lounge-esque songs were played.

This however begs the question: "What event occurred that triggered such drastic changes in music?" 

Which leads me to some critiques. The only major issue (which really isn' too bad as the graphics do a good job of the portrayal) is the lack of information that appears to a user who does not have access to Processing. Considering that the stipulation of the project was to develop in Processing, (in this respect) the project is a complete success as the interactive features would be fully realized by a user. However, if even the slightest amount of information was presented as static text then the infographic would be able to transcend the Processing platform and be successful on the same level but without any background knowledge.

With that said there are some positive comments to be made. The use of colour and text is, as aforementioned, simple. So even without the incorporation of information an unfamiliar user can get a sense of what is meant by the infographic. The contrasting colours allow for comparability and it much resembles my colleague's concept art for the piece available here. He followed through with his idea and made it work. I also find the use of the circular backdrop unique and interesting. This contrasted against the angular shapes also presents in interesting artistic license.

On the whole I feel the piece is aesthetically pleasing to look at, it is a fun/interesting and self-discovering topic. The way the information is presented makes it, with little effort, easy to understand and compare between the data.

I give it 8 apples out of 6 oranges.
(But seriously it was good).