Rationale: Project B, Dataviz

For this project I chose to do a dataviz, which has me feeling a little regrettful, but I did learn a lot and that’s what it’s all about.  I learnt a bit more about creating websites and became aware of so many online applications that it made me dizzy.  I also chose to do a dataviz, as my job involves creating maps and looking at aerial imagery every day, so I wanted to expose myself to something different.  

I was close to changing to the geo-narrative several times seeing it was something I was familiar and comfortable with, even though I’d probably covered a lot of ground on my dataviz journey, it felt like I was getting nowhere.  I’d even started looking up crop circle locations, which I had planned to plot in Google Maps, to see if any patterns emerged when connecting these locations (whhyyy didn’t I do that)!?  Somehow I decided to persist with the dataviz, and unfortunately I spent so much time trying different online applications and trying to get things to work, that the final presentation of my dataviz journey is lacking (and that gives me a nervous twitch).  Also; Since uploading the pages to webs I found that the small amount of interection I had no longer worked, iframe wasn’t supported by the free registration and the layout was all ‘out of whack’. 

I was able to fix most aspects of the ‘out of whack’ layout, such as making the background image a single image rather than it being tiled, and removing the outline that appeared around my png files.  In an attempt to resolve the iframe problem, I upgraded my service with webs, as I have some other websites I want to create anyway and the extra features will be helpful.  Unfortunately this didn’t resolve the problem entirely, as the image galleries I’d created with iframe don’t seem to work with Explorer.  I had hoped that upgrading my service might also make the interaction work again, but alas it doesn’t.  I’m not really sure how to fix this, there’s no obvious solution, but I’ll do some more digging to work out both the iframe and interaction problems.

In relation to the kind of data I was interested in;  I am passionate about issues relating to the environment and animals, so I wanted to create a dataviz to visually communicate information, about the negative impact humans have on the environment and on other inhabitants of the planet.  Two issues that I am particularly interested in communicating include: the staggering number of animals that still suffer animal testing, and the decline of orangutan numbers due to non-sustainable palm oil production.  As both these issues are driven by consumer demands, we as consumers can make a difference, by being aware of these issues and making ethical consumer choices.  Although I think people are more aware of these issues today, particularly as information is so available now, I have found that some people don’t really want to know about ‘issues’, or they don’t know what they can do to make a difference.  Perhaps it’s simply a case of information overload, and for this reason I think a dataviz would serve as a useful tool in raising awareness, due to the ease of learning from data in this way. 

After many hours of searching for the kind of data I was interested in, I decided to contact a few organisations such as WWF, PETA, BOS and several others, to see if they would be willing to share some data.   I did get a few responses (from those I just named), but the data provided was restrained inside lengthy reports, and compiling it felt a little too manual for this assignment.   All the same, I’m very grateful to those who gave their time in an effort to help me, the reports were really interesting and informative. 

Then I came across surveygizmo, and realised I could create a survey to collect my own data.  I researched various online survey tools but returned to surveygizmo as they seemed to offer the most features for free, and also had student licences which seemed to have a few extra features.  Although I couldn’t gather the data I initially wanted in this way, I thought it might also be interesting to learn what kinds of charities or causes inspire people to give – either money, time or otherwise.  The survey is still open, and your response is welcome while you check it out – what makes us give?

With the results collected from surveygizmo, I was able to view the responses individually, or in a summary which included pie and column charts.  I wanted to share these results however, and in a visual format that I could customise.  I also wanted the results from the survey to automatically update the dataviz as new responses were received, and set up some interactivity, which allowed viewers to look at the set of data they’d selected.  I obtained an API key with surveygizmo, but due to my beginner’s understanding, I just couldn’t get it to work.  I thought it would be great if I could get surveygizmo and one of the online chart making tools to get together to create a dataviz.  I did consult with my tutor, and searched for examples of datavisualisations that had used surveygizmo results in this way, but it seems this API might be in it’s early stages as it is expecting an upgrade in the near future.  I contacted surveygizmo to see if they could assist, and they did change the settings for my student service, which provided a few extra features such as filtering data for reports.

I was able to export the data from surveygizmo to a CSV file, which meant I could at least create some charts in Excel, to see how the data could best be communicated.  I chose to use a ‘Radar Chart’ as I hadn’t seen this kind of graph in the corporate world, and it displayed the data nicely.  The types of charities and causes were displayed at points around the edge of a circle, and the percentage of people surveyed who: a) donated money, b) did voluntary work, and c) made ethical consumer choices, were represented by coloured shapes that came from the centre of the circle.  The shapes in the centre reached out to the points on the outside of the circle, depending on the percentage that was given to each charity in terms of money, volunteer work or ethical consumer choices.  I tried importing the data into some of the online charting tools, but they either had limited customisation and/or didn’t have interaction.  In addition, I hadn’t worked out how to make this happen automatically, but thought I’d explore it again later when I had a few more survey responses and had explored the other surveygizmo features.

I then took the images and shapes from the Excel graph into Photoshop, so I could further customise the look of the dataviz.  I added transparency to the centre images, so several layers could still be viewed at once, without losing the other shapes as they were layered.  I also created an animation in Flash (although my experience with Flash is fairly limited), so that I could demonstrate how the layers would look together or on their own.

I then wanted to create the same kind of chart which displayed the distribution of funds/volunteer work/ethical choices by certain groups of people (ie. executives, trade workers, homemakers), and allow the user to switch these layers on and off using checkboxes.  I didn’t want to do a comparison of which groups donated more, so instead I set up formulas within Excel that gave figures detailing the distribution of donations made by certain groups.

I then tried setting up checkboxes within my html document, which I had some success with, but for some reason the three layers appeared in three seperate charts rather than just one.  I was successful in creating chartboxes within Excel though, which required quite a few formulas for each checkbox – I was pretty pleased with myself for overcoming this advanced Excel task.  Now if I could just work out how to share this online!  I did come across some online versions of Excel only this week, so it didn’t leave me much time to look into this option, but it made me wonder if my results from surveygizmo could be set up to automatically feed data into an online version of Excel – now that would make me very happy, especially considering I had worked out how to customise the Excel charts a lot more!  I am going to explore this option, but considering the time I had left to put all the work I’d done together somehow, I wasn’t able to work this out before the project was due.

I found this assignment quite a struggle, and there are many things I would do differently next time around, but I guess you only learn that by doing things a first time.

My project can be viewed online through this link – my dataviz journey

Anyone for a survey?

It would be great if you could complete this quick, anonymous survey 🙂

what makes us give?

What makes us give?

When I receive a gift from my mother, I usually recognise the wrapping paper – a little more crinkled, a few more tears, and bits of sticky tape collected along the way.  Some of my friends think it’s a bit sad that I find it impossible to rip open a present, but my mother has instilled ‘no waste’ values in me from an early age, and I appreciate what the wrinkled up wrapping stands for.  I admire my Mum’s environmentally conscious actions, which have seen her recycle wrapping paper for at least the past 30 years.  As I know she and many from her generation lived through some tough times, perhaps her motivation for recycling comes from the experience of being without, and of making the most of what you have … or she may have just been way ahead of her time in the recycling game.

So I started to wonder what issues motivated people of different ages, interests and backgrounds, which charities and causes do people give to.  Do people who shop and curl their hair care about animal testing on beauty products?  Do car enthusiasts care about the environment?  I wanted to break down this kind of information, and present it in a way that allows the viewer to ask and answer these kinds of questions.

There are so many unfortunate circumstances around the globe today, so I think it’s hard for people to know where their donations, time and energy should go, where it’s most needed, how your donation will be used and so on.  Whatever the case may be, I would really appreciate your honesty in completing my survey – what makes us give?

B is for bad

For now it’s called Project Bad, but I’m still hoping it can be renamed to Project Bloody Beauty Bonza (maaaate)!

I guess I thought it would all come to me in a vision of light if I poked around on the internet long enough, but I’ve been chasing my tail on this project, and I’m hoping it will all fall into place soon.  I feel that I deserve to be granted some kind of nerd karma, because I’ve really tried to seek out all the nerdyness I can to make something awesome, but my brain seems to be rejecting all the nerdy stuff I throw at it.  I think my brain is scared that it will have to rearrange the furniture too much in there, just to make room for all this knowledge … but we will persist.

Initially I had loads of ideas for a dataviz, I searched for the data, emailed a few places to see if they’d be willing to share some data, and read up on all the sites and tools I’d found doing endless searcing on the web.  I did get some responses from a few places that were willing to provide data, but the data was all a bit vague, and would have involved reading through the large reports they’d kindly provided – which were interesting, but manually compiling a collection of data seemed to be the wrong way of doing this.

In any case, I do have some data now, and have used it to try and make some simple charts and graphs using everything from Excel to the many online tools I’ve come across.  Most of the online tools I tried were fairly simple to use, but the results were a little generic looking and didn’t allow for much customization.  I did hope to learn some tricks where I could feed my data into some kind of interactive (and nice looking) chart, but my basic level of html and scripting is not bringing that dream to life.  Initially I thought I’d just do some searches and find some code, but it doesn’t seem to be that simple.  I found myself going back to basics with html, scripting and realised that I didn’t even know which bits of gobbledy gook to put where.

All that said, I do think I might be a little bit smarter than I was a few weeks ago, maybe I have collected a few extra nerd points!

Where art thou dataviz?

I’ve researched chart, map and dataviz creators till all hours of the morning (several mornings), had some cool ideas, collected some data, played around with the data in Excel, worked out how to do a nice image gallery (would have been helpful for the last assignment) and wondered if I should perhaps consider doing a geo-narrative instead ….

I think I’m all datavizzled out.  I applied some eye drops to my red, computer scorched eyeballs, only to realise that they were also numb because I didn’t even feel the dropper poke me in the eye …. at this rate, I won’t even be able to viz my data.

This is a lame blog entry, possibly because I’m feeling kinda lame right now.  Oh woe is me …. and where the hell are my violin players and my tiara!

I don’t even drink the stuff …

As shown in my last blog post, my first dataviz experiment (in all it’s simplicity) was quite revealing – which I think is what you want from a dataviz.  I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the findings however, and we need to set the record straight ….. I’m just really not that interested in ‘caffeinated beveridges’.

So, thank you Wordle for highlighting this dire situation, which has prompted me to make a few changes to a previous blog post, before whipping up a shiny, new word cloud of my blog (any excuse really).

When I grow up I wanna be a dataviz whiz

So I’ve been looking at lots of examples of data visualisations, played around with a few simple data visualisation tools, and have started chasing up the kind of data I want to communicate to the masses. 

I’m not sure how it’s all meant to come together yet, but in the meantime I did enjoy creating a few text based images in Wordle.  This was no major victory though, as it was created in less than a minute, by placing the url to my blog in a box and clicking on a button. 

I did another one on a blog about cars, as I wanted to see if a big V8 or hemi appeared amongst the text, but it turns out that it was actually more about girls.  So not only was this amusing, but it also demonstrated how effective and useful a word cloud is in getting the heart of the matter.

Hit the coffee spot!

In class today, we were asked to come up with and discuss ideas for websites and online services that use collective intelligence. My group decided on a site which provided recommendations on where to get a good coffee. I’m not a big brown brew drinker, but if I am going to have a caffeinated beverage, I’d like to know where to get a good one.

I think the current method of finding a good cup of joe is through word of mouth.  I have often heard people sharing their favourite caffeine spots with great conviction and pride, and some people feel very strongly about a good/bad brew, so we though it would be an ideal subject which could use collective intelligence!

We also discussed drawing from Twitter feeds, blogs, image sharing sites and news pages, as well as using geocoding where possible, offering coupons and prizes for providing so many ratings (that might need more thought), using thumbs up/down or 5 star ratings to keep ratings current, providing data visualizations and information on different types of beverages (eg. finding the perfect mocha or chai latte in your area).  In addition, we thought an iphone application could be created to direct you to your closest ‘good brown drink spot’ on the fly!

ps. Wikipedia racing – thumbs up!

Get flocked!

So I’m driving home from the lecture, unconsciously allowing a comfortable gap between my car and car in front, and the car behind me is doing the same which is nice.  The traffic is moving along at a steady pace, there’s cooperation and ease when the traffic merges, and then I realise “Hey!  I’m part of a flock!”  This makes me feel all positive about the world, the collective intelligence of the people, using their skills and knowledge to make for a safe and pleasant journey home.  You could say I was in a dandy state of mind …. until this man flies past (in his car) like a frantic bird riding the tail of the other cars, squawking and flapping his wings as he went!

I was just reading Rhyll’s blog post ‘The Internet – One Big Social Gathering‘ where she talks about user-driven sites such (eg. Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia), and how they wouldn’t exist without collecting intelligence.  I think this just shows what a social and enthusiastic mob we are, generally eager to jump on board, try new things, connect with people, share a point of view or a hot tip.  My mind is always open, but I’m constantly suprised by the ever-changing world, it’s like you can’t have your ears or your eyes open wide enough or long enough to take it all in.

In any case, today’s lecture was cool – especially the The 1K Project II and the Notre Dame 3D model.  The concept of the 3D model blew my mind, and I wonder if I should get a few more servers in my head, so I don’t have a combinational explosion (I do like that term)!  I go from being totally amazed, inspired and excited to overwhelmed.  Are the youngsters just as astounded, or have these things become so normal and expected? 

Then I talk to my lovely mum (who is a spritely 60-something) about some of the cool things I’ve been learning, but she’s just not interested and promptly moves on, excited to show me the beautiful fleece she’s just purchased before taking the spinning wheel for a few laps. 

So I guess this just means I’m old enough to remember when Atari was the coolest thing ever invented, but too young to ignore all the cool things that have been created since the Atari (but by the way, Atari still rocks)!

I hope you enjoy this clip; Elephants don’t fit through the pipes as well as ants, are not as graceful as a flock of birds, but they are beautiful, sensitive,  intelligent and amazing.

United we stand …

During today’s tutorial I learnt that:- Flickr is owned by Yahoo, Yahoo’s rival is Google, Google owns Piknik, Piknik is the image editor used by Flickr, Flickr has become a rival of YouTube since introducing video sharing, YouTube is owned by Google, and yet Google still allows Flickr to continue using Piknik …. which is nice, or is it because Google wouldn’t mind also buying Flickr one day?  I learnt loads more than this actually, but I found the Google/Yahoo relationship interesting, as it seems that even rivals can share.

So we’re focusing on ‘collective intelligence’ and I enjoyed learning about how different sites use it, including Flickr, Photobucket, Image Shack, Yahoo Photos, YouTube, Google, Amazon, Reddit and Last.fm.  I thought ‘Google Trends’ was a great way to start researching – easy, interesting, instant, visual, informative.  Google Trends provides a simple graph which compares the usage of sites, it highlights events along the graph like a timeline, and it provides links to news items on these events  – ahhh Google, you’ve done it again! 

On a side note, it’s funny to see how skeptical some people are when something new arrives on the scene – such as Facebook or Twitter – and then to realise that before too long it’s just part of everyday life and people can’t image life without them.

This ‘collective intelligence’ is exciting, and it makes me think of all the cool things you could do with it!  Now all we need are the skills (plus courage, motivation, knowledge, money and a white, fluffy cat) to make it happen and commence world domination!