Let's think about what type of data

July 8th, 2009 § 0

Before I start coming up with some sketches, it is important to figure out what type of data will be in this application as well as how the data will correlate with each other.

My thought process will follow Ben Shneiderman’s Visual Information Seeking Mantra of:

“Overview First, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand“.

In this post, I am going to brainstorm the types of data that I will be using and in future posts, take each section and break it down.

Calendar data - Time-based with various events/appointments generally falling into three type of categories:

  • Time-specific – ex. Doc Appt
  • All day – ex. Birthday
  • Span/range – ex. Vacation

To-do lists or tasks -  Can or cannot be time based and can fall into two type of categories:

  • Deadline
  • Ongoing

Personal data – Data that you want to use for your own reference so that you can see patterns.  Some examples:

  • Sick/Illness – ex. Flu in November and Sinus Infection in December
  • Car maintenance
  • Moods
  • Food diary

Social data – Data from social sites. Some examples are:

  • Blogs
  • Photos
  • Bookmarks

Other data – Data that doesn’t fall in the above categories, but I think it will be interesting to see how it meshes with the other data.  Examples:

  • Weather
  • News events
  • Pop culture
  • Historic events

The next post, I will do some deeper brainstorming into the Calendar data.

From calendar to…?

July 4th, 2009 § 0

When I first came up with this idea for my Thesis, I originally wanted to come up with a way to visualize calendar data. Now, I want to do more.  I’ve been interested in the concept of lifestreaming for quite some time now as well as managing your personal information. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a graphical representation of when you were sick so you can see patterns?  For example, I always come down with a sinus infection every few months, but I’m not sure exactly when because I  don’t write it down.

My goal is to turn this calendar application to a personal diary/calendar/lifestreaming/personal information manager and using information visualization techniques and going beyond that.  Imagine my Capstone calendar demo + lifestreaming.

You are probably thinking I’m crazy and that it’s not possible.  Or who would use it. Well, this guy talked briefly about a calendar UI for lifestreaming.  Also, I am making this for me…cause I’m that kind of a person. :)

I will be posting some initial concept drawings soon.

Beginning/Continuation

June 22nd, 2009 § 0

About a year ago, I had my Capstone Defense and passed.  I put the calendar project, on the back burner to take care of things and get my brain off of it.  But now I’m ready to begin again.

I have fresh eyes and new ideas.  I am ready.

Let the fun begin!

Terminologies

June 22nd, 2009 § 0

During my Thesis, one of the biggest problems I came across while doing research was terminologies.  There are so many terms as wells as definitions, it made me crazy.  Actually, it still makes me crazy.  People come up with new terms, has their own definitions, and there is no standarad yet.  So my mission, is to come up with a mindmap/chart/table – something visual to put everything in some type of order and how they influence each other. What’s driving me is trying to figure out how they relate to each other.  So first step, is to find what terms are being used and come up with a list of what influences this terminology.  This will be a continuing work in progress.

Here’s the plan: (thus far)

  1. Come up with terminologies
  2. Find out how they came out, who defined, when was this term coined, etc
  3. Influences – what areas does the term encompass and to what degree?

Areas/Influences:

  • Interaction
  • Art/Aesthetic/Design
  • Data/Information
  • Flavors: Art, Science, Computer, Technology, etc

Terms:

  • Information Design
  • Information Archectiture
  • knowledge visualization
  • typography
  • User interface design
  • Ambient infovis
  • Social infovis
  • Visual Design
  • Interactive Design
  • Interactive Media
  • New Media
  • Computer Graphics
  • Information Visualization
  • Information Aesthetic Visualization
  • Human Computer Interaction
  • Data Visualization
  • Scientific Visualization
  • Information Graphics
  • Cartography
  • Graphic Design
  • Digital Art
  • Computer Art

I think this is a good starting point.  Each week, I will post about a definition. If you are interested in helping out, drop a comment!

Lifestreaming

June 22nd, 2009 § 0

Lifestreaming is “an online record of a person’s daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person’s online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos.” (Wordspy)

I was reading this post from Flowing Data, and it got me thinking why people are either interested or not interested in social data.

Lifestreaming is something I’ve been following for quite some time now.  Heck, I have one of my own that I have been testing out.  Unfortunately, current lifestreaming applications as well as the one I am using, does not quite meet my needs.

I view lifestreaming as my personal online diary. Therefore, when I aggregate all of my social data into an application, I want ALL of my data (including private/protected entries – for example: a protected Twitter account or a Flickr photo that is only viewable by my friends) to show up in the application.  Which leads to a big issue: data portablity.

Case in point: Can you export all your Facebook activity to something?

There are other things that I want bug me which I won’t get into.  But I do plan on doing something about it…

Embedded fonts vs Local fonts

June 22nd, 2009 § 0

In Flex 3, TextArea – you cannot use both embedded fonts vs local fonts in the same text area.  It’s either one or the other.  Also, there is property that you can use to tell the text area to use embedded fonts.  By default, this value is TRUE.  In order to access, the property you would need to use the namespace and then can access the property:

this.textField.getTextField().embedFonts = TRUE/FALSE;

Also, beware of global properties that are set in your external CSS file.  If you are using a global font and are did not specify a font for the TextArea – IT will use the global font.