Data visualisation: Key to me.

Introduction

‘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.

It has come to my understanding that Facebook participants do not realise the seriousness of privacy and the many concerns that exist. 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.
Information is gathered from photos, clothing, status comments, basic information, personal information, contact information, education and work.

Data is analysed from the Facebook profile to reveals the users emotional identity.  Data is translated into a fun and aesthetically pleasing graphic representation to show how face book profiles reveal a lot 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 aim of the overall design of this project is to engage 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 have chosen one technique to attract audience. I posted the logo ‘key to me’ and a link to this blog 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 of participants

The 15 participants chosen for this data visualization project are daily users of Facebook. As a designers I know that I have a social and moral obligation to respect the rights of my participants. I asked several people if I could analyse their Facebook profiles before I started this project so I would not offend anyone. 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.

• To create the data visualisation project I used two programs Microsoft Excel and Adobe Photoshop.

• 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.

• Once I had worked out a process of translate information 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.’