Post a Comment On: A picture of health

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It was once again a great pleasure to be invited over to Norway to work with the students at Gjøvik University College for a day's workshop last week. In the same way as last year, I set up a survey to ask them questions about themselves, and tasked them with creating A3 posters to visualise data about their whole year group. Again, I was really impressed with how far they got in just a few hours.

The posters

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This group focussed on colours - hair colour, eye colour and favourite colour (represented by the clothing). From the original sketch, they worked up two different treatments. I love the idea of the eye pie chart. The two different hair treatments both work too. It may be difficult to see the exact proportions with different coloured hair in the left had one, but I think it gives a good overall impression. The group explained that they didn't have time to do what they wanted with the jumper colours in the left hand diagram (as in the sketch). The labelling in the left hand treatment is very helpful, and a title would help even more!



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This group decided to combine elements of their different sketches together, to represent people's hopes (in the sky) and fears (buried underground). They also didn't get time to finish - they wanted to design symbols to represent the hopes and fears to go on the circles. I'm always cautious about using circle area to represent data as it's a bit harder to interpret than bar heights. However, in this case I think it works, since they do allow the anchoring of the link lines better than a bar would. If they'd had more time, I'm sure they would have been able to put the titles on properly (they need to be a bit bigger). Good to see the key for male / female, but some kind of key for the circle size would probably be helpful too.


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This group created a very attractive map which uses colours to link the different regions to some data about the people from those regions - their gender, favourite shapes and heights. Ordering by height reveals that the guys tend to be a bit taller than the girls, but it's a little hard to see any pattern with the shapes. Again, a title is needed and a key of some sort. I must remember to specify this more carefully in future workshops!

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Initially, this group wanted to present loads of the data, all separated into female and male groups. I'm pleased that they decided to only present a small part of it though - it presents a much clearer story, and enabled them to really focus on making the animals individual. If they'd had more time, they could have vector traced some animals to fit better with the nice cats and dogs they found - the rabbit and sloth fit okay, but the tiger is unfortunately a different style. Again, a title would be good. I like the overall look of the final piece though.


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A very ambitious design, with a lot of data! I like the slightly spooky combination of the male and female figures, with different heights representing the average for each gender. The eye and hair colours and favourite colours are all clearly labelled, and it's good to see a title on there. For me, some more explanation is needed for the "number of siblings" display at the bottom, and the ages display. I think both are linked to the height of the symbols, which is perhaps a little hard to interpret. I'm not sure these are really necessary anyway, as they don't really relate to the central figure, which I think should be the focus of the whole thing. It's a shame they took out the favourite drinks from the sketch. While it would be challenging, I think this could be integrated well with the central figure if it held one vessel in each hand. The individual heights from the scales at the side could perhaps be tied better to the figure with a line linking the top of the figures to the dots at the side, showing how the average relates to the individual data points. It's a really interesting idea though to present the "average student" and I'm impressed that they got so far with it in a short time.


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This group looked at the times that the survey was completed, and linked this to people's age and again gender. I think the survey was sent out at about 9am in the morning (UK time) which probably explains the surge of people completing it then. also interesting to see the boys coming in later on... I think the visual style of this one could have been developed a bit more though. I could see a lovely ornate antique style clock working well here if there was more time for the students to develop their piece.


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This is another great idea, with the different seasons illustrated, to show when people were born. I like the simple labelling, and the use of the sky to show the seasons is good too. Given time, I think it could be visually embellished a lot, with coloured backgrounds, trees, and more "seasonal" activities, clothing and weather. Also, a title would help the viewer to understand the piece. But a great idea, and very good considering the time available.

Other ideas
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At the start of the workshop, I asked each group to sketch up a few ideas and select one to develop. Sometimes this was based on how achievable the ideas were in the time available. Some of the other ideas were excellent though, so here are a couple of the sketches for the more ambitious proposals:


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This is a great idea for showing the favourite food data with different restaurants, with the correct number of people in each one. It narrowly missed out on getting worked up to the colours portrait, largely because of time available, but I do love this idea. Food for thought! (forgive the pun...)


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Another great idea that would have taken some time to work up is the "student dorm room" that displays all sorts of data. I particularly like the book shelves with the favourite books on, and the map showing transport routes to the university.


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I can see this idea for displaying the mode of transport to university working well too, perhaps with a number of people marching along on foot, and a number of cars and the correct number of people on a single bus. It reminds me a bit of this fantastic London Transport poster from the '60s: http://now-here-this.timeout.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/These-vehicles-are-carrying-69-people-by-Heinz-Zinram-photographer-1965.jpg


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Lastly, this poor group did work up this idea, but lost their work when someone pulled the power lead out of the computer they were working on. The idea is great though - each student is represented by a plant. The height represents their height, the colour is their favourite colour, the number of leaves their favourite number and the number of flowers the number of siblings they have. I can't quite remember, but I think they split the diagram into male and female too in the end.


Thanks very much to all the students for their hard work, and looking forward to some more fun times in Gjøvik next year!