Final Project

For our final project we were asked to design a complex visualization that displays what we have learned this semester in order to explain it to someone who has not taken this class. At first we were not sure what we were going to do because there were so many possibilities. Then one of us had an idea to make a children’s book that incorporated material from the class into a simple narrative. We based the book off of a book that was popular with young girls when we were younger because of the way the author chose to dual-code the images with the text so that they work together to tell the story. We followed the same basic storyline the author used and factored in vocabulary words from the glossary by throwing in extra details and elaborating on parts of the story. We also tried to factor in as many of the projects we did in class, such as mind maps etc. where we could fit them in. Creating the actual book and meticulously hand writing every word and hand drawing a lot of the images was easily the hardest and most time consuming part of this project and took a little bit longer than expected. Creating the narrative was a bit easier because we could just type it up and we just had to follow along with the book but it was also quite time consuming as well.

Overall this project was a great learning experience; a true crowning piece to recap everything we have learned in class this semester. I think doing this project was more helpful than taking a final would have been because of the hands on learning experience it required for us to utilize the knowledge we gained throughout the class. Working in a group allowed us to combine our knowledge and build of each other’s ideas to form a unified and complete understanding of the course material.

Personal Reflection: I thought that this project was valuable to looking back on the semester and actually applying what we learned. By making a childrens story we were able to see the information through the eyes of someone who would perceive it a lot differently then we do. Amelia used the vocabulary that we learned however we had her apply them in a different, more simple way. Adding the graphs and other information graphics as well as images was in fact easier since we did choose to do a childrens book. We were able to gauge how to display these things by who our view was and how well they could comprehend and understand. Overall I thought that this was a really great project and it made me look at everything we have learned this semester a lot differently!

January	$2,344	$4,846
Febuary	$2,549	$4,683
March	$2,645	$4,539
April	$2,978	$4,767
May	$3,003	$4,871
June	$4,478	$5,328
July	$4,467	$5,538
August	$4,442	$5,627
September	$4,503	$5,016
October	$4,012	$4,289
November	$3,500	$4,113
December	$3,431	$4,065

For my multivariate display I decided to show the difference in my bank account according to month over the past two years. At first I tried to have it down to the exact amount with change but it made the bars hard to read on the bar graph so I changed it. The reason that I chose this subject was because since its the christmas season we obviously spend more then usual. I wanted to see if certain months had certain effects on this. For instance I noticed that from september to october for both years I had a steep downfall in funds which I attributed to back to school shopping, books, supplies, clothing, ect. and this year because I started buying my own groceries. I also saw a steep spending spree during the months of november and december which again I attributed to black friday and the holidays. August seemed to be pretty high across the board because I had just finished 40 hour a week summer jobs both years and Febuary was relativly higher as well because of working full weeks during break.

#9 Story Board

I enjoyed doing this assignment because it allowed us to think outside the box. I guess we generally can look at a picture and infer the situation behind it and see what is going on however we never really notice that we are doing it. Creating these storyboards was a good way to see how your mind works when given an image to decipher. The first story board with just one picture was easy to do. I chose the picture of the men walking through the road with masks on from the dust and smoke. I infered that there had been a forest fire and their houses had been wrecked. I actually wrote about the four pictures that I could visualize leading up to this event and then I went in and found the pictures. The second storyboard with the 2 pictures was a little bit more difficult. I couldnt really tie any of the pictures to one another. I decided from the begining that I wanted to do the soccer picture so I created a story based on what I knew from that picture and then went from there. I knew that the boys were standing that way because they were trying to block a penalty kick so after I wrote about that I chose the picture of the man because it looks as if he is anticipating something, like a game winning soccer goal. This led me to find a picture of a goalie missing the ball and a picture of the crowd cheering for their team. For the first storyboard I used scene to scene. The images just go from one to the other hand you dont really need an action to see what is going to happen next because it is infered. For the second storyboard I used action to action. You really had to place an action for each of the images because to really feel the anticipation behind the story.