Data Portrait
Description
The data portrait I created for the week tracks the moments over the course of 5 days when I have a noticeable sense of satisfaction and dissatisfaction about certain aspects of my life. Each cell-like structure corresponds to one day, with the layers of cell petal representing the moments of satisfaction and the brown doodle ball moments of dissatisfaction. The numbers of the cell petal translates to the number of moments of satisfaction I felt in one day. The size of overall petal for each day is determined by the overall sense of satisfaction I felt at the end of the day, whereas the size of doodle ball is determined based on the total number of dissatisfaction I felt throughout the day. I also added little annotation in the portrait to highlight some small moments of joy and frustration I had in that period of time.
Design Process & Reflection
I decided to only use 5 days out of the 7 days of data I collected, for I found it a good amount of content that also does not overcrowd the canvas aesthetically. For the visual design, I was very inspired by the diary sketch style of Giorgia Lupi. Moreover, through my style, I was also hoping to capture the different sensations I got in moments of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. When I experienced satisfaction, it feels like this wave of expansive wave of peace has washed over me; it feels light, soft, amorphous. I wanted to embody all those qualities when I created the cell-petals for satisfaction. On the other hand, when I experience dissatisfaction, it is always this quenching feeling in my stomach, as if there is someone pinching or squeezing inside my body. Hence, I wanted to represent my dissatisfaction with something dense and hard edge. Initially I used these triangular shapes, but their contrast to the soft, undulating petals produce too much of a visual dissonance.
The most difficult question in my process comes down to building a harmony between two shapes with contrasting characteristics. After multiple trials, I decided to settle on these doodle ball gifs. I found them less sharply edged yet still capable of conveying that sense of that dense, loud, storming frustration. I chose to not represent the amount of dissatisfaction numerically but only through the size of the doodle ball, both out of aesthetic consideration, but also this experience of a snowballing effect of dissatisfaction. This is something I notice in my data collection, as I began to pay much more closer attention to my state of mind during the day. I realized that when it comes to dissatisfaction, multiple small incidents can often build up throughout the day and snowball into a large outbreak of frustration at the end, whereas satisfaction does not really have this quality to me. I also noticed that before I embarked on this data collection, I was much better at recalling moments of dissatisfaction than satisfaction. Yet throughout the process, I subconsciously made myself pay more attention to my states of satisfaction, reminding myself to appreciate them and giving them as much weight as my dissatisfaction. It was an interesting internal process for me as well.
The portrait itself foregrounds the accumulative effect of these moments of satisfaction and dissatisfaction at the end of the each day. However, I wanted to remind myself and the viewer that each of the elements carries a specific piece of memory. Hence I added the animated annotation.
As of now, I found that my grumbling doodle balls perhaps steal too much of the limelight in the image. I would hope to create a better balance in the visual attention, as I have hoped to do so to my own recollection. For the next step, I hope that I could find a way to make the cell-like petals rotate with each frame, without having to draw each of them individually. So far I have not figured out an efficient way to do this. But perhaps the labor it demands is what gives those satisfying moments the appreciation they deserve!