I would say that I excelled the most in finding a data story. Sorting the data and finding an interesting piece of it that I wanted to focus on was the most fun part of the process for me, because I never knew what was going to be in the data set until I jumped into it. This was the first class where I didn’t have as much creative freedom to choose my topic, and I had to adjust to finding something within a data set I was given.

I initially chose the blockbuster movie data set because I knew it would be a challenge. There were over 400 movies spanning 50 years, and dozens of series within that collection. It was a lot of work to sort, and not everything could be filtered at the same time, which was incredibly frustrating to work with. However, it was in realizing that I couldn’t filter audience and critic scores at the same time that I found my data story: they were completely different. No matter how I sorted the data set, the scores never matched up. This peaked my interest because we put so much stock into critic scores. But if they didn’t match up with audience scores at all, who was really the better judge of a movie? This was the start of my data story.

This was my initial zine. To be honest, I was figuring out the visual language as I did it. I knew I could’ve done better, and shelved this for my gem project. I chose three main aspects of the score differences to focus on: a series, the highest rated movies by decade (1970’s-2010’s), and the highest rated genres. Because there were so many series within the data set, I chose Twilight for its cultural impact. Hasn’t everyone watched Twilight? Even if you haven’t, you know exactly what it’s about. After that, I focused on the highest rated movie by critics and audiences of each decade (it should be noted that this was specifically the Rotten Tomatoes score), and then looked into specific genres. This is my final gem project:

Figma prototype

*Note: for the final prototype, the article itself is on one screen. However, for display purposes, I put each section onto separate wireframes

I believe that this was initially one of my strongest concepts. When I presented the zine to the class, I got really positive feedback, and people said that they learned a lot from my project. While I don’t think this started out as one of my strongest pieces, I wanted to turn it into a gem project. I did not like the visual language in my zine, and when I was brainstorming what to do for my final, I got an Apple News notification. Usually I just swipe them away (because they’re just depressing), but this time, it gave me an idea. I clicked on the notification and scrolled through the app. However, I wasn’t satisfied with using an iPhone wireframe. I’ve made apps, and just finished my thesis website, so I was in the mood to experiment with something else. I actually got the idea to do an Apple Watch after chatting with Affan about a problem with his Fitbit. I thought a watch would be a really interesting challenge for two reasons: one, I don’t have an Apple Watch, and two, it’s about a quarter of the size of an Apple phone. I don’t own an Apple Watch (frankly, I don’t want an Apple product that close to my body), so I don’t know its interface. How would Apple News look on a tiny watch compared to a bigger phone? I researched dozens of pictures of Apple Watch screens to get a feel for the general font and image sizes.

To quote Kim Blum, my data story was inspired by “scrollytelling.” I thought it was only fitting put a data story about movies on an electronic platform. I also wanted to make something cleaner and more editorial than my zine, and I was able to format the original writing into more of an article style project. Although I knew this couldn’t be as interactive as a phone app or a website, I still wanted to make it fun and engaging, which is where those transition screens at the beginning come in.

I used interaction design and data visualization skills for this project, and I would like to add onto the story in the future. This came out so much better than my original zine, and I was really proud of how the visual language and digital visualizations came out for this project.