To get started on our next deliverable project we need data, so this week I have been keeping a selection of different data points about my week.
The first set of data is about my travel, methods, locations and time spent travelling. I use three main methods of travel, car, bus and walking. I have noted the amount of time and mileage I have used each of these during the week. As well as noting the location I have been going to, I feel this will give me the chance to create a number of different styles of chart for my dashboard as well as a map showing my locations.
I started by noting down the mileage, time and method of my travel over the week, here is some of my notes on paper:
I also used my phone’s weekly report function to see how much average my average screen time is and my most used apps:
I then created a spreadsheet, with my travel data as well as some other topics, such as how often I went certain places, my sleep and alcohol consumption, here is my spreadsheet.
I was also able to access Spotify and get my top artists and songs of the month. These are only updated monthly but they are pretty accurate picture of what I have been listening to this week.
I also created a quick Notepad document of the shows I have watched over the last week. I can break these down into genres, most watched channels etc. and get some good data for my dashboard from this.
I also started looking at other app dashboards to inspire some ideas of how I might go about designing my own. I looked at lots of apps (some that I use, some on the app store) as well as online tools and Pinterest. What I found was a wide selection of different dashboard styles and methods of visualising the data. There was also a large gulf between some really well-designed and thought out dashboards through to some very poorly designed ones. I included examples of both in my mood board some as inspiration by their good design and some so that I know what I can avoid and do better.
I am really looking forward to this project I feel that it will be really interesting to look at all the different ways I can turn raw and dull data into interesting visual pieces that tell a story. In this case the story of a week in my life.
Here is my mood board: