Radhika Sawhney Portfolio

Project

Drawing with Data

My Role

Data Artist

Year

2016

Summary

A visualization of a week's worth of travel data to spot patterns.

Dataset
Process
Visualization Design
Digital Version

Dataset

The challenge was to visually represent the various facets of the data in a easily consumable manner that allow the user to interpret behavioural patterns.

Process

I started by defining high level goals, and understanding the story that I wanted to tell with the data. This helped me articulate the objects and the key value that the visualization would provide the reader. The goal was to paint a picture of what a person's movement through the span of a week looks like.

The goal was to paint a picture of what a person's movement through the span of a week looks like.

Next, I looked at some things the user (visualizer’s friend) would like to see:

She would like to receive some thing that looks beautiful and brightens her day.
She should be able to see as much of the data as possible in the easiest manner.
She should be able to understand the data easily, i.e., the elements should be intuitive.

Using these guidelines, I tried to understand the data points and thier correlations as a next step. While grouping data with similar attributes together, I saw a strong correlation between Miles, Duration and Avg. Pace., and chose to highlight this correlation.

Finally, I played around with some visual elements that depict transportation, destination and movement.

Visualization Design

This is the final design that visually depicts a week of travel in a person's life.

I chose to represent all the data in a simple and intuitive manner. I grouped together properties that were similar for the ease of understanding, and for smooth ﬂow of information. Thinking from the end user’s perspective, I wanted the data to be visually appealing, as well as easy to read and understand. Here are some key factors I kept in mind while creating the visual:

Intuition: I created the visual to be intuitive, such that the data can be easily interpreted. For example, the each node is designed to resemble a car. The Start and Destination points are placed at two separate ends, going from left to right.
Data Correlation: For the ease of understanding, I wanted to depict the data such that it shows any attributes that relate to each other. I wanted bring color to the fact that Average Pace is a function of Miles and Duration, hence all three are plotted within the same semi-circle to show how changes in one attribute aﬀect the other.