The 4×4 Model for Knowledge Content is a guide to get users to engage with your website. The content you produce on your website needs to stand out as on average users will on spend 10 seconds viewing your content.
The Four Models are…
The Water Cooler: The purpose is to grab the users attention and to be direct and to the point. Typically these are headings. Depending on whether you are interested in the topic determines if your choose to engage or not
The Coffee Shop: This is were the content is explore in greater detail but not a fully in depth. It follows on from the water cooler and explains the ideas rather than introducing them.
The Research library: The library is where you go into more dept and detail about a specific topic. It’s the committed time to investigate a topic and contains research and data.
The Lab: This is where users can interact with the data from the research library. It gives the audience the ability to filter and play with data directly.
In week 12 we were asked to create a quick style guide for our 3B Assessment. included in this blog post are precedents (example image) of what inspired my Assessment overall aesthetic, example layout grids, colour palette and typographic examples.
The images below are precedents that inspired my work for 3B. I liked how they have used their colour palettes to make the infographics visually appealing and engaging.
The images below are examples of layouts and grids that I have considered using for my assessment.
LAYOUT EXAMPLES
The following 2 images are example layout for my 3B infographic design. I have played around with using both portrait and landscape layouts to see which one I prefer to use.
EXAMPLE DESIGNS
STYLE GUIDE FOR 3B ASSESSMENT
My style guide for assessment 3B below displays the direction I wish to proceed in and the colour palette being used. I have chosen to go with a red colour palette seeing as though Netflix used red as its primary colour.
For this weeks tutorial class we were asked to develop a dashboard based around student screen use. We used dashboards to help convey the story being told. The dashboards below depict how screen time is being used throughout the week.
The dashboard below is compiled of 3 sheets. The first graph shows the amount of records per hour based over the period of a week. It highlights the fact that screen usage increases towards the afternoon and later at night. The highest amount of screen time is 10pm closer to when people start going to bed. I have also included screen usage per category and activity which shows that almost every category and activity involves some type of screen usage.
UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AVERAGE SCREEN USE
Below is another example of a dashboard created to depict university students time spent using a screen. I have used a bar graph to sort the data into 2 categories (Male and Female) to see any similarities or differences in how they used screens. Interestingly, Female spend more time using a laptop, whilst males prefer to use a desktop device.
In our week 10 tutorial week look at the basics of how to create a dashboard in Tableau. The above dashboard is a group of graphs made to show how university students use their time throughout the period of a week. Included in the dashboard is a bar graph showing the average hours spent in each activity, a tree map of average hours per category and then a simple pie chart which shows students screen use and the average hours spent on each device.
ON AVERAGE HOW MUCH SLEEP ARE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS GETTING?
The story here is to show just how much sleep University students are getting compared to the rest of their daily activities. As we can see from the bar graph above, Uni students over the period of a week, are getting on average 8hrs 30 mins sleep each day. From the visualisation above it tells us that sleep is a vital part in our everyday routine and therefor is much larger than the other activities.
Although we already know that sleep is vital to our life, we wanted to look into how our sleep measured up in comparison to national averages. The requirements of sleep hours tend to stabilise out in early adult life around the age of 20 and although individuals sleep varies, the required amount of sleep is between 7 and 9 hours a night. From this information is clearly shown that from the university students we collected data from, almost everyone was getting close 9hrs per night.
This data visualisation tells a story about the geological finds of dinosaurs and mammals throughout time, via the use of a map. It tells you a story about what was living on earth during certain periods of time and the location of were scientist have found prehistoric fossils.
How does it tell it?
The way it tells the story is through all the dots on the map and the timeline at the bottom. The dots are colour coded to match what kind of species the creature was and where it was found. When a dot is clicked, the user will get an in-depth description of the fossil. The time at the bottom is also colour coded to match the time period. Each row going down representing a more specific time period.
Does it allow for different levels of interrogation that can be seen or used on the part of the reader? e.g. can they drill down to discover more detail?
The PBDB Navigator does allow for different levels of interrogation on the part of the viewer, as viewers can narrow their search down to a specific fossil type, period of time or even continent. The viewer can also access more info on a particular circle by clicking on it, this will reveal more information about the fossil discovery.
Are you able to create multiple stories from it? If so, what are they?
The website has a collections count in the bottom right-hand corner, which counts the number of collections on the screen at that time. From the website, users are able to create multiple stories as they can gather information on multiple time-periods, types of fossils, and where they were collected. Users can discover what fossils where found when and in which locations they were found the most.
What can you say about the visual design- layout, colour, typography, visualisation style?
I think the site could be more aesthetically pleasing. The map is quite basic, and I found the navigation quite confusing before watching the walkthrough video. The colour choice is basic, but it does allow the dots to stand out, and suits the use of the site. I like the visualisation style, but I think it could be better designed to create easier navigation and allow first time users to understand it quicker.
What improvements would you suggest
When first opening the website I would suggest having a walkthrough tutorial to show how to use the data navigator and what each device does, rather than an overload of information at once. I would suggest having different shapes for the varying periods of time as its uses dots for the whole thing and it’s hard to differentiate the periods of time as the colour shades are similar and don’t stand out from one another
Where does the data come from, and comment on its source
The source of this data comes from fossil occurrences that have been found throughout time and placed in scientific publications which are added to the database by the websites contributing members. The data is collected by nearly 400 scientists and 130 institutions in over 24 countries to provide scientists and the public with information about the fossil record
DATA VISUALISATION 