Gjøvik graphics workshop
Just back from an interesting trip around Norway - where I spoke at the Norwegian Agency for Pollution and Climate and Oslo Science Library. The main purpose of my trip though was give a talk and to run an information graphics workshop at Gjøvik University College (Høgskolen i Gjøvik).
17 of the students had filled out a survey about themselves before I got there, with about 20 questions on their favourite colours, films etc. The challenge for the workshop was to work in groups of 3 or 4 to produce an information graphic based on the data - to say something about the whole set of students - in just one day!
I was of course very impressed with the results. I'd have been happy if they'd just produced roughs on paper, but most groups actually managed to boot up Illustrator (and in some cases Excel), and get at least a partial design done. While they didn't have much time to visually refine the graphics, I was really impressed by the communicative power of their designs.
Results below:
Group 1:
Sofie Nordengen
Therese Brokhaug Romnæs
Tine Rafoss Ivarsen
These three looked at favourite animals. Really easy to see which animals are the favourites! I like the hand drawn hairstyles for the people - which makes it more personal than using generic symbols. I think a text label for each animal might be helpful here - not easy to see what some of the more unusual ones are (wolf, ferret, rat and bear I think). Also, positioning the individual circles in a line, or even a nice smooth curve would be cool. But overall very clear and easy to see the pattern in the data (lots of people like cats and dogs).
Group 2:
Inga Lilja
Tonje Heimdal
Jørgen Røsnes Ellefsrud
Mette Pernille Hellesvik
This group looked at favourite colours in groups divided by other data - favourite animals, favourite shapes, and how people got to university. Again, very clear to see the data. Some kind of visual separation between the three rows (dividing lines, enclosing each row in a shape, or just more white space between the rows) might help to show that the same people are divided three times. The good thing about representing people as coloured bars is that you can also see the data about how many people are in each group (good for the transport data in particular).
Group 3:
Karin Bøyum
Tom Christian Haugom
Ida Karoline K Kjønsberg
This time, the comparison is between people who would prefer to live in a town vs those that would prefer to live in the countryside. In contrast to group 2, it is this division that is shown for 3 sets of data, rather than the same data for different comparisons - truly there are many ways of interpreting the same data!
I like the way that the group redrew some illustrator stock symbols for the transport data to make them look more visually similar. The transformation of height data to lines is appropriate as well. It looks like they have not used 0 as the start point though, and it's not quite clear what the range is, as there is no scale - either writing in the data in cm by each bar or providing a scale would be helpful. Interesting to see the pattern in the favourite colours - particularly the way that those in the countryside seem to like blue! A good clear representation of the colours, and I like the central split running through all three categories to tie them together.
Group 4:
Marit Haugerud
Malin Staurheim Enggrav
Nora Birgithe Stang
Emil Christoffersen
A really interesting data choice here - the group looked at the automatic server timestamp for each entry to see when people responded and how long it took them to fill out. The line down the left represents 24 hours. This one took quite a few calculations in excel - firstly converting hours and minutes to just minutes, and then working out how tall each bar should be, and also what y-position it should start at. I would love to see the full graphic sometime! The group had a major finding part way through - everyone seemed to be doing it in the middle of the night. We worked out the server must have been in America, so the time zone was out. It would be pretty simple to convert these in a future version, but with the limited time we had I think they had to stick to it in the end.
Group 5:
Bendik Lund Flogard
Cecilia Breivold
Hanne Neverdal
This group chose to look at three different ways of categorising people - transport choices, age groups, and a very imaginative categorisation of favourite drinks (into alcoholic, soft with sugar, soft without sugar, and hot drinks). The icons in the top half of the graphic show the breakdown very clearly.
The bottom part of the graphic shows the relationship between the three groups using pairwise comparisons (two at a time). The area of the circles represents the number of people in each group, and the link lines represent the number of people that belong to each category that they link. A small note saying that the circles were area-based rather than diameter-based would be helpful, and given a longer time I'm sure they could come up with some better colours (check Adobe Kuler or colourlovers.com if you're stuck in future, guys!) Overall, a very ambitions and interesting display.
One idea for this one that I wish I'd thought of at the time would be to display all three together, and using curved lines to link them (something like this):
Group 6:
Camilla Melissa Morstad
Monica Andersen
Tore Jan Risvik
Another very interesting set of data to choose here. The group looked at people's town of birth to decide whether they were born in a town or in the countryside. They then looked at whether people wanted to live in the town or country, to see if there was a change or not. In an earlier version, rather than using the figures below the two photos to show percentages, the group showed the absolute number of people starting in each category, which I think I preferred - especially in such a small data set as 17 people. The overall message is clear though, that more of those living in the city want to move to the country. In fact, I think the top part is the strongest bit of the diagram, and the pie and bar charts aren't really needed - they are showing the same data, after all.
Group 7:
Andreas Bjørkli
marte Bjørneseth Hansen
Ragnhild Johanne Karsrud
Runar Bergstad
Lastly, but definitely not least, this group have real staying power, staying long after the others had left to finish off. Visually a very appealing one. I approve of the non-white background and colour choices. The reversed-out animal symbols are very attractive as well.
The information is presented simply, using concentric pie charts (with dashes for the gender data). I like the reinforcement of presenting the data with small marks next to the names. It might actually be even more useful to have the raw numbers presented instead - a good technique to use where possible so that other people can use the data again if needed.
Overall, I was very happy with the results everyone came up with - particularly given that they had a very short time to choose which data to work with, ideate and then realise their designs. Good working with you all - I look forward to running more workshops like this in the future.
17 of the students had filled out a survey about themselves before I got there, with about 20 questions on their favourite colours, films etc. The challenge for the workshop was to work in groups of 3 or 4 to produce an information graphic based on the data - to say something about the whole set of students - in just one day!
I was of course very impressed with the results. I'd have been happy if they'd just produced roughs on paper, but most groups actually managed to boot up Illustrator (and in some cases Excel), and get at least a partial design done. While they didn't have much time to visually refine the graphics, I was really impressed by the communicative power of their designs.
Results below:
Group 1:Sofie Nordengen
Therese Brokhaug Romnæs
Tine Rafoss Ivarsen
These three looked at favourite animals. Really easy to see which animals are the favourites! I like the hand drawn hairstyles for the people - which makes it more personal than using generic symbols. I think a text label for each animal might be helpful here - not easy to see what some of the more unusual ones are (wolf, ferret, rat and bear I think). Also, positioning the individual circles in a line, or even a nice smooth curve would be cool. But overall very clear and easy to see the pattern in the data (lots of people like cats and dogs).
Group 2:Inga Lilja
Tonje Heimdal
Jørgen Røsnes Ellefsrud
Mette Pernille Hellesvik
This group looked at favourite colours in groups divided by other data - favourite animals, favourite shapes, and how people got to university. Again, very clear to see the data. Some kind of visual separation between the three rows (dividing lines, enclosing each row in a shape, or just more white space between the rows) might help to show that the same people are divided three times. The good thing about representing people as coloured bars is that you can also see the data about how many people are in each group (good for the transport data in particular).
Group 3:
Karin Bøyum
Tom Christian Haugom
Ida Karoline K Kjønsberg
This time, the comparison is between people who would prefer to live in a town vs those that would prefer to live in the countryside. In contrast to group 2, it is this division that is shown for 3 sets of data, rather than the same data for different comparisons - truly there are many ways of interpreting the same data!
I like the way that the group redrew some illustrator stock symbols for the transport data to make them look more visually similar. The transformation of height data to lines is appropriate as well. It looks like they have not used 0 as the start point though, and it's not quite clear what the range is, as there is no scale - either writing in the data in cm by each bar or providing a scale would be helpful. Interesting to see the pattern in the favourite colours - particularly the way that those in the countryside seem to like blue! A good clear representation of the colours, and I like the central split running through all three categories to tie them together.
Group 4:
Marit Haugerud
Malin Staurheim Enggrav
Nora Birgithe Stang
Emil Christoffersen
A really interesting data choice here - the group looked at the automatic server timestamp for each entry to see when people responded and how long it took them to fill out. The line down the left represents 24 hours. This one took quite a few calculations in excel - firstly converting hours and minutes to just minutes, and then working out how tall each bar should be, and also what y-position it should start at. I would love to see the full graphic sometime! The group had a major finding part way through - everyone seemed to be doing it in the middle of the night. We worked out the server must have been in America, so the time zone was out. It would be pretty simple to convert these in a future version, but with the limited time we had I think they had to stick to it in the end.
Group 5:
Bendik Lund Flogard
Cecilia Breivold
Hanne Neverdal
This group chose to look at three different ways of categorising people - transport choices, age groups, and a very imaginative categorisation of favourite drinks (into alcoholic, soft with sugar, soft without sugar, and hot drinks). The icons in the top half of the graphic show the breakdown very clearly.
The bottom part of the graphic shows the relationship between the three groups using pairwise comparisons (two at a time). The area of the circles represents the number of people in each group, and the link lines represent the number of people that belong to each category that they link. A small note saying that the circles were area-based rather than diameter-based would be helpful, and given a longer time I'm sure they could come up with some better colours (check Adobe Kuler or colourlovers.com if you're stuck in future, guys!) Overall, a very ambitions and interesting display.
One idea for this one that I wish I'd thought of at the time would be to display all three together, and using curved lines to link them (something like this):
Group 6:
Camilla Melissa Morstad
Monica Andersen
Tore Jan Risvik
Another very interesting set of data to choose here. The group looked at people's town of birth to decide whether they were born in a town or in the countryside. They then looked at whether people wanted to live in the town or country, to see if there was a change or not. In an earlier version, rather than using the figures below the two photos to show percentages, the group showed the absolute number of people starting in each category, which I think I preferred - especially in such a small data set as 17 people. The overall message is clear though, that more of those living in the city want to move to the country. In fact, I think the top part is the strongest bit of the diagram, and the pie and bar charts aren't really needed - they are showing the same data, after all.
Group 7:
Andreas Bjørkli
marte Bjørneseth Hansen
Ragnhild Johanne Karsrud
Runar Bergstad
Lastly, but definitely not least, this group have real staying power, staying long after the others had left to finish off. Visually a very appealing one. I approve of the non-white background and colour choices. The reversed-out animal symbols are very attractive as well.
The information is presented simply, using concentric pie charts (with dashes for the gender data). I like the reinforcement of presenting the data with small marks next to the names. It might actually be even more useful to have the raw numbers presented instead - a good technique to use where possible so that other people can use the data again if needed.
Overall, I was very happy with the results everyone came up with - particularly given that they had a very short time to choose which data to work with, ideate and then realise their designs. Good working with you all - I look forward to running more workshops like this in the future.
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