Intermodal Challenge
Data Visualization
Designed by Marcel Pace, Juliana Stinghen
This project presents a data visualization, developed for the NGO CicloVida as my graphic design bachelor's graduation project at the Federal University of Paraná — which was approved with the maximum grade.
It encompasses the design of a data visualization alongside the research of experience and information design, in order to improve the dissemination of data on urban mobility.
Final Data Visualization
Animated Data Visualization
The Process
To highlight the pros and cons of the means of transportation available in Curitiba, a major capital in the south of Brazil, arises the Intermodal Challenge, an annual experiment that details, in an empirical fashion, a comparison among the transport modalities´ efficiency for commuting in the city.
Even though very significant data is collected from these challenges, they have been superficially presented to the population as it lacks an instigating and appealing visualization method, once the reports contain simple tables and ungraceful bar charts.
Raw Data
This project remodeled, through graphic design, the data of four Intermodal Challenges into interesting and user-accessible information. Setting off from a strictly numerical data set and translating it into a single data visualization capable of establishing the proposed comparison, bringing through the experience of reading it a greater understanding and awareness to the subject.
Experience Design
The starting point of this project was, together with social design, the overall, esthetic experience — one that is so meaningful that changes the user/observer. By taking this approach to experience, we brought in several authors (specially Donald Norman in 'Emotional Design") and drew a specter of the experience, considering how Perception leads to Cognition that leads to Reflection, how Emotion affects all these steps, and how they affect the Use of an artifact. Motivation and Social Context were also taken into account.
Specter of the Experience
Design Process
The phases of the project consisted of Initiating and planning, Requirements definition, an iterative Production/Validation phase, and Closing.
How to integrate research into the design process was a question we wanted to answer. We decided to use a list of requirements, derived from a benchmark analysis of similar projects — all of which were based on the six aspects of the experience that our model defined. That would be thoroughly checked during validations of the project.
For managing the project, we used a mix of classic project management approach (pmbok, waterfall) with agile/SCRUM. We controlled the macro deliverables with MS Project and the micro with Pivotal Tracker.
Benchmark Analysis and Requirements Definition
First, we did a detailed benchmark analysis of other data visualisation in order to define which requirements we would use in the validation phase.
Production and Validation
We organized a Focus Group, where we and the participants proposed different visual strategies to approach the data visualisation
Then a group of design professionals answered a questionnaire in order to decide which was the best strategy to follow.
Chosen strategy
With the strategy decided, we gathered all the data available from our client CicloVida from all the four Intermodal Challenges and organized in a way we could better use it.
Then we started to properly work in the visualization, defining fonts, colors, shapes, and so on — all based on the list of requirements...
Color palette
Shapes "palette"
... followed by a long list of alternatives.
The last one seemed so promising that we used it for the first prototype, so we could test it later. There were some aspects missing from the alternative that we added to the prototype:
First prototype
We then tested it with our client to get some insights:
Although very effective, the test brought attention to some design flaws, specially regarding the reading order and disposition of elements, which were addressed accordingly.
A simple rotation dramatically improved the reading order.
The first test also revealed that we needed to attract more attention to the category of the modals, which we addressed with a beautiful intertwining of lines:
We then prepared a second prototype for testing with a broader audience:
Second prototype
For the last test, we prepared a questionnaire to check all of the requirements that we proposed at the beginning of the project, all of them derived from our research and our model of experience design. We also asked each participant to perform a series of tasks regarding the use of the visualization.
We then compared the tasks results and the answers regarding the experience, and the results were extremely satisfactory!
Closing
After the second test, we concluded the project was a success.
And we can undoubtedly affirm that since we met 53 out of 56 requirements.
We also developed several smaller deliverables, such as:
Scientific banner
Monograph's cover
Project presentation
And our monograph, that you can access clicking the image:
