Reflexion

On reflection I believe my project actually went very well. It took a lot less time to do then I expected, which gave me the opportunity to focus on the little details, such as what a web page should look. I'm very happy with the outcome of my project, I think the visualisation are simple but get their point across greatly which is exactly what I wanted.  I have really enjoyed this project, I find this subject fascinating and would greatly like to continue studying in in my final year.

Of course there is always room for improvement in every project. I would like to create one visualisation that is interactive for the user and they can move from the scientific, through the middle and to the artistic visualisation. I would also like it so that the user should be able to change the colour of the visualisation as well. I was unable to do this because sadly I do not have the technical knowledge to be able to do this at the moment. However I am very keen to do this for my final year project and build upon what I have already done. I am very excited about the fact that I could possibly be doing this for my final year project.

The webpage

As this project is being handed in on a sole webpage, I wanted to design page specifically for this project.I wanted the page to visually look good, my project is so heavily the based on what the visualisation looks like I wanted to put this across in my webpage. Another thing I wanted to was to keep the page is very simple to not deflect from the visualisation. So instead of putting my project explanation on my page I have made it downloadable. I decided to make pictures for my documentation boxes because I in my opinion when you think of data visualisation you expect something that is visually pleasing, and you do expect of the small touches such as these images. I think that having these images helps get across the point that this is a visual project. I love my final website, by readme and appendix are both downloadable documents and the blog is a link. 


I wanted to decide a page, that would look good in my portfolio. I believe that this page would achieve that, as it is very important to me what the webpage looks like because I want to be a website designer. The image below is just a design of what hopefully the webpage should look like.

 

Development

To get the data from Facebook I had to create a app. I had issues with this because Facebook was having trouble. Once I created the Facebook app I had to give it permission to read Information Aesthetics wall. Once I had permission to read from Information Aesthetics wall I could use the Facebook PHP SDK to access the post and then used this to get the data need to make my visualisations. 


For the first visualisation I used the Google chart API to create the bar chart. This is a very simple graph. You can hover you mouse over the bars and it will tell you the title of the project and how many likes it has. 

For the second visualisation I used SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) to create the circles. You can click on the circles and they will take you to the website. I have included the the number of likes on the circles. 

For the third visualisation I created the line using a Div with a link inside and a background colour. When you click on the lines it will take you to the website of that visualisation. 

 

Design

The design of my visualisations is an important part of my project. If I don't design these visualisations correctly it will cloud my reason for my project.  I have sketched out what each visualisation will roughly look like and represent the different types of visualisation. All of these visualisations will be interactive, when you click on one of the charts/circles/lines  it will take you to the post about that particular visualisation. So not only do the post show you which are the most popular it also allows you to explore the data be used.


The image below is my scientific visualisation this will be a simple and quite boring bar chart. All the bars will be the same colour and when you click on the it will bring up the information about the visualisation.

 This is the middle visualisation which included pictures and information. I will have different coloured circles scattered all over the visualisation and depending on how popular these visualisations are is depending on how big the circle. There will also be information stored in the circles such as the post name or the amount of likes. This visualisation finds a balance between artistic and scientistic visualisations by combining the two. 

 

  This design is for the artistic visualisation. It will consist of different coloured lines throughout the page, and depending on which of the most popular, will determine which lines are figure. There will be no information attached to this visualisation, in essence it will just be a pretty picture. Of course this pretty picture will have a hidden meaning, which is made clear in the other visualisation.