The second project we were asked to complete was a dashboard showcasing a week in our lives, this project is in aid of our diagrammatic skills.
Before starting to design or collect any data, our first task was to complete a few master apprentice tasks, similar to what we done with the music apps. Master Apprentice tasks are recreating an already made design in order to practise and learn techniques when creating your own. Below are my re-creations of the dashboards, I tired to create them to be as similar as possible. I found this task easy but it did take a few tries to get it right
In class we were asked to complete another master apprentice task to familiarise ourselves with charts and visualising data. This was really helpful as I can understand how to design data visually and know the amount of colours that should be used to make it as straightforward and understandable as possible. Below are the two master apprentice tasks I completed.
The master apprentice task was a great exercise to start us off with, I feel like the typography is slightly off, however the rest looks accurate and has allowed me to understand the importance of layout and ease of visualising data. I am considering using the circular chart within my dashboard.
To begin creating a personalised dashboard, I began to collect information from the previous week, things such as how much sleep I got, money spent, how much time I spent on my phone, what movies I watched etc. I noted all this information onto a page so I can visualise the data I will be inputting into my dashboard. I also drew some graphs beside each set of data as I had an idea of how I wanted each to be presented. This tracking process did not take long as I had most of the data on my phone, I had a lot of fun doing this and thought it was quite fascinating tracking a week in my life.
Below is the messy collection of data I put together, now I can start the design process.
I used the book “RAW DATA” by Steven Meller and Rick Landers, I found this book to be full of erotic practises of data visualisations, which was not very useful however I discovered some colours schemes that I liked the look of.
