Welcome to Laurens' network media.

Reflective Meta Post

Looking back over the content of Networked Media Production I have discovered a massive amount of information about the Internet and network media. I am amazed how much I was out of touch with the Internet. To learn about networking was beneficial to my graphic design career because the future in design will be based predominately online.

Before I begun this unit I underestimated the enormity and power of the Internet. I believe that the Internet is a valuable resource for networking of information, entertainment and business. The internet is the most accessed source for information today, it is over powering other platforms such as television and print media. I think the real power of the Internet is it is shaping lifestyle, social structure, economy and culture by connecting people together through networks.

A reflection of my Tumblr blog content.

By looking at the amount of content in my blog I can see that I have learnt a lot in this unit.

The blog was a great place to expand on ideas and information from both lectures and class. The blog assessment forced me to take the unit seriously and think about what I am taught each week. I think the blog was beneficial to me as  a graphic design student because I took information and discussed it further with what I think relevant to me. There are many things that I think are important today such as contemporary issues in design. The environment and poverty were such topics that I discussed and linked back to the content of the unit.

My blog is functioning as an example of network media.

My blog links to some great web sites that I will access in the future. Some mashups, and data visualisations that I particularly liked are discussed through out my blog. Examples are Amaztype, Flickrtime, Pachube, Movements, Gapminder, Twistori, Twittervision, Thru-you and Everybloc.

I now have social networking account with Deviantart, Delicious, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. I joined these sites so I can be connected with others who have similar interests and dreams and can inspire my design work. The unit has taught me why it is necessary to create and maintain links between my peers from the unit and beyond. Social networking sites are a great way to keep people in touch with friends, family, work mates and also mete new people.

My Tumblr account follows 36 people from my class and beyond. Following class mates has helped me stay on track with the unit and also know what others class mates are doing. I am interested in art and design so also have followed a group of people to see their latest designs.

The traffic to my blog varied. I had four followers. I think the biggest down fall for my blog is it had no comments. To improve my network and to gain comments I could have been proactive and commented on other class mates blogs or even other blogs outside this unit. One thing I do not like about Tumblr network is you can only follow and have followers from a Tumblr account. If I choose another service for this assignment it would have been Wordpress because I like the freedom of design.

Three best blogs

Massive amounts and a wide variety of information

The big switch

Protecting my design work and me

Data visualisation project: Key to me.

Link to project: keytome.tumblr.com

‘Key to you’ is a data visualisation application that gathers data from the social networking site: Facebook. Facebook was chosen for this project because it is the number one social networking site. Facebook connects millions of people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.

I believe users do not realise the seriousness of privacy issues on facebook. When posting information about personal lives users are dangerously exposing themselves. Abuse of Facebook profile information has been demonstrated with several privacy breaches. Concerns have emerged since Facebook was launched in 2004 these include stalking, harassment and bullying. This project was designed to shock Facebook users who post massive amounts of information about them personal lives everday.

Data analysis. The data for this project ‘key to me’ is gathered from personal Facebook profiles. This information comes from photos, clothing, status comments, basic information, personal information, contact information, education and work. Data is analysed to reveals users emotional identity. It is then translated into a fun and aesthetically pleasing graphic representation, to show how face book profiles reveal a lot more more about a person then the eye can see. Hidden raw data in this application can reveal several factors of the individual’s emotional identity such as: mental state and self-confidence.

Project design to suite target audience. The overall design of this project engages with audience who are culturally and technologically aware of social network sites. Research shows that this target audience ‘generation 3.0’ have a high cultural insight into the Internet. Therefore this project design must be better equipped to approach the target audience. I have designed both my blog page and data visualization to appeal to an 18 to 25 year old demographic. The simple layout, funky logo, typography and bright colour scheme have been considered to create an over all identity.

Attract audience to this project. There are various approaches I could take to network audience to this project. To attract young adults and participants to this data visualisation project. I could post the logo ‘key to me’ and link on several social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Wordpress.

Graphical representation of data. The graphical data is represented in the form of a key. This key is filled with a multiple array of colours. Fourteen colours are used in this project to symbolise fourteen emotions. For example yellow to symbolise happiness, black to symbolise power and grey to symbolise depression.

Subjective associations for colour and emotion. According to colour symbolism and psychology there is multiple ways to associate emotion with colour and there is no correct way to do this. The impact of colour in design will always be affected by the context. Cultural colour associations will vary depending on context; time, place, and society. Therefore I have attempted to link colours to emotion with the influence and inspiration of my own personal.

Ethics. The 15 participants chosen for this data visualization project are daily users of Facebook. As a design student I am taught that I have a social and moral obligation to respect the rights of people in my design work. I asked people if I could analyse their Facebook profiles before I started this project. Two people I asked said no and four participants requested that their names would not be used on the blog.

Building the data visualisation project. The most complicated part when creating this project was translating information from face book profiles such as clothing colour, facial expressions, personal experience and reflection to an emotion/colour. The Facebook profile were analysed by looking at personal information. All of this information can reveal hidden data that the eye or mind normally cannot see. I conducted further research to find out how profile information can be translated to colour.

To create the data visualisation project I used two programs Microsoft Excel and Adobe Photoshop. I used excel to mathematically calculate the data. I used a spreadsheet so I could easily work out what how many colours would be placed on each key. I represented each colour, as a number in excel to make the process quicker. I built the keys in Facebook. Each profile I analysed had a different amount of information thus creating diverse keys.

Keys were different sizes and had a variety of colours in them. The key varied in size depending on how much information was on the Facebook profile. The more information about an individual user then evidently the more the key will be filled with colours. Once the key is completely full with colour the individual true emotional identity will be ‘unlocked.’

Info Graphics and data visualisations making a difference

One of many benefits of Info Graphics and data visualisations is they could be used to improve the current poverty crisis. It is a known fact that people in poverty do not choose the way their life is shaped, they are forced into poverty when they are born.

Designers may scratch their heads when they are asked to solve issues such as poverty. Usually it is thought that an issue such as poverty is best addressed by policies and legislation rather than a design. I believe designers must do something and have the ability to create change. The article and interview ‘Designing An End to Poverty’ demonstrates how designers must act as they can make a difference.

‘Designers are the key to showing how to mobilize cutting-edge technologies, new materials, and new approaches to older materials and technologies, in order to solve problems such as clean water, safe cook stoves, low-cost housing, Internet connectivity for the poor, safe methods of delivery of medicines and vaccines (such as safe syringes), and much more’ Jeffery Chafs

After I watched a video in the lecture by Hans Rosling it was obvious to me that having access to Info Graphics and data visualisations can make the decision-making a lot easier. Clear information enables designers to have a clear understanding for the seriousness of contemporary issues.

The video I watched demonstrated how figures and statistics when organised in a clear and interesting manner can make it a lot easier for the both the human eye and mind to understand.

I think Hans Rosling has done a great job to unveil the beauty of statistics. He has done some very impressive work that can pave the way to an improved future. He creates both a clear way to view data and also debunks myths. Myths include Bangladesh, CO2 emissions and urbanization. To see his work check out: Gapminder.

Profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualise data.

To find out more about data visualisation I looked at popular applications online with great solutions to organise large amounts of data. The following two tools that I will discuss are great examples of ways to visualize data in an innovative manner. I like both of following examples because they display complex data in an organised, clear and simple way for target audience.

Amaztype is a typographic book search. It is a fun way to easily see a collection of books from Amazon. Amaztype presents 1000’s example of books that from a pacific keyword such as sea, environment or food.  To get more information about a given book, simply click on it and you are redirected to another page to find out more.

I thought this is a  great examples of data visualisation as it is simple way to find a pacific books on amazon. Books can be found quickly by users of the site with out the hassle of searching through pages and pages of irrelevant information.

The above ‘amaztype’ image is sourced from 360east.

Flickrtime uses a similar idea. Flickrtime displays data in a interesting and appealing manner. I was personally shocked with the mass of data that is uploaded every second to the Internet. A massive amount of photos can be viewed easily and clearly.  This tool uses photographs that are being uploaded to Flickr.  Flickr API presents the uploaded images in real-time. These images form a clock that shows the current time.

The above ‘Flickrtime’ image is sourced from crainium.

People do not want to look at complicated graphs, pie charts and histograms that bore them in seconds. Pointless, fake and wrong information can also be a bad way to present data.

When a piece of data is viewed designers have less then 12 seconds to catch audience attention or lose them. I think they data should be clear but have an aesthetic appeal, innovation, eye catching and interesting.

“To convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data.”  (Smashing Editorial)

Some advertising techniques are used to attract and appeal to a specific target audience in design. These techniques could be used to sell data visualisation and attract audience.

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS. This a great way to avoid complexities, and also respond to a variety of problems with one solution. This makes the solution both clear and effective.

AVANTE GARDE. This is a advertising technique when a suggestion that using this product puts the user ahead of the times.

WIT AND HUMOUR. Audience are mostly attracted to products that have humour or wit. This diverts them with reason to laugh or to be entertained by clever use of visuals or language.

TESTIMONIAL. A famous personality is used to endorse the product such as a famous celebrity, sports star or politician.

PATRIOTISM. This advertising technique is targets those who want to purchase a product to show their love for their country. A product with the Australian owned logo would attract a pacific audience.  Audience will like products with this logo because it is Australia made or compony employs Australian workers.

Massive amounts and a wide variety of information?

Western culture is more frequently, faster connected to a wide variety of information. Like the mobile phone, internet and gps and new reportage in real time. Ubicomp is everywhere today. The following definition clearly sums up what ubiquitous computing is; ‘Computers everywhere. Making many computers available throughout the physical environment, while making them effectively invisible to the user…’ (Farlex encyclopedia)

Having access to information makes the consumer more aware of issues and therefore are more likely to respond .The consumer is more savvy today as they have greater access to information than in generations past.

Problems such as economic, cultural, legal, privacy, health, social and practical design issues exist alongside contemporary issues such as environment, over population, disease, the changing economic climate and the use of the worlds dwindling resources.

Contemporary design issues include these problems because the world has become a smaller more closely linked arena and we have become aware of our impact on each other, and the risks we take if we did not address these issues seriously.

So my understanding is because there has been massive amount of information on the internet there has been a demand for ‘itelligence’. This ‘intelligence’ I am talking about is a clever way to organise all this data. Designers must look at new ways of looking at data sets. Examples of data sets include Pachube.

Above: Pachube.

Pachube is ‘a service that enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world. The key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual.’

Above ‘We Feel Fine’. By Jonathon Harris.

Movements by Jonathon Harris 2006

How Movements works is it is an application where ‘We Feel Fine’ is divided into six discrete movements. Each movement is illuminating a different aspect of the chosen population. The data is found from posts by a single individual from various social networking sites. Particles represent a single feeling.

Jonathon states ‘the colour of each particle corresponds to the tone of the feeling inside – happy positive feelings are bright yellow, sad negative feelings are dark blue, angry feelings are bright red, calm feelings are pale green, and so on.’

We Feel Fine paints these pictures in six more formal movements titled: Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds.

Data visualisation is the process of representing abstract business or scientific data as images that can aid in understanding the meaning of the data. It is important to understand that data visualization does not mean data needs to look boring to be functional or extremely sophisticated to look beautiful.

- Designers commonly fail to achieve a balance between design and function. They create gorgeous data visualizations which fail to serve their main purpose which is to communicate information.

- As a graphic designer I am often given a brief that needs to communicate an idea. Canberra University is teaching me that I have to explore a broad domain of disciplines and access a wide range of multiple understandings if I will create something that is functional or communicates an idea clearly.

- I believe we should convey ideas effectively by communicating its key-aspects in a more intuitive way. Data sets will often be rather sparse and complex therefore aesthetic form and functionality need to be considered if a designer wants to communicate information clearly for audience. Design principles such as scale, colour, shape, position and movement are techniques that can be used to communicate information clearly.

Wisdom of crowds

The ‘wisdom of the crowd’ is the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals.The wisdom of crowds can be beneficial to society.

Wikipedia is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia where millions of people contribute making it one of the most popular information websites on the internet.

Failures include

Dutch tulipomania- (is used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble.)

This was a period in the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century. The price for the tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. By 1636, tulips were traded on the exchanges of numerous Dutch towns and cities and then suddenly collapsed.

Us dot-com bubble-buying shares to sell them for more in the future.

Nigerian penis thieves- Nigerian people claimed to be witches acused by crowds that their penis had be stolen by witches.

Sub prime mortgage crisis- society buying poperty to sell it and make profit.

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