INTRODUCTION
The project is called A Day in the Life of Americans and is created by Nathan Yau. It visualizes how Americans spend their time on different activities in a day such as housework, education and leisure. And this project simulates 1000 persons typical day in their lives. There are two parts in the project. The first part is a dynamic graph in which dots with different colors keep moving and gather at different places as the simulative time passes. The zones that the dots gather represent different activities. Therefore, you may see the area and color component of each zone varies with the time. The second one is a static graph. Instead of recoding the “moving” process, it records the trajectory of these moving dots.
INFORMATIVE QUALITIES
I think this project demonstrates the information in the data clearly, which enables users to perceive and understand the data in an intuitive way. Firstly, the area of each zone depends on the number of dots, which in reality represents the number of people. In this case, by seeing the size of each zone, users can quickly know what most people do in a certain time of a day and how their activities change with the time. In addition, the detailed percentage is also displayed near each zone. What’s more, the trajectory can offer us information on from where people leave and then what places they will go to. By seeing the density of lines, we can also know the frequency of those activities.
AESTHETIC ASPECTS
The visual of the project is also well-designed. Different colors are used to represent different activities. And all the stuff are presented in the form of circle, which helps the project have a coherent theme. Apart from that, the way the dots move and join each other is also carefully designed and the movement looks really smooth and natural.
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