Wellness in Duality: A Community Data Physicalization Experiment
For this project, we worked with our data knowledge in a group to create a data physicalization experiment based on a given wellness duality prompt.
Our wellness duality: Distraction vs. Inspiration - Is procrastination a source of creative insight or merely an avoidance tactic? We explored the ways people viewed their procrastination habits - as a source of inspiration or distraction.
Preliminary Research
To begin our process, we completed preliminary research about our topic - procrastination. A lot of our research was done on what procrastination exactly is defined as, as well as how it can be used as inspiration.
From there, we then worked on ideating three concepts that would effectively gather data on our topic:
Concept Ideation
Oddly enough, we ended up deciding to go with something completely different than our original concepts. We wanted to work with the balance board idea, but we concluded that the metaphor of "balancing" inspiration and distraction didn't make complete sense for our research goal.
The new concept that we moved forward with utilized a map that would focus more on the concept of how people view their procrastination. This concept would involve a map of different "regions" of procrastination activities such as sleep, watching media, substances, etc. The participants would use a string (color coded to the level of intensity they feel it hold over them) to trace the activity to either inspiration or distraction.
Our next step was to create the "nations" of the map. To do this we brainstormed all of the ways we personally procrastinate, as well as ways others usually do. We came up with the following categories:
Final Design
We then used these categories to create our map, which would be laser cut using plywood. We also created a file that would be printed on foam board that would hold the wooden map as well as display directions, the categories, and other information.
It was then time to physically build the installation. We laser cut the plywood map and had the foam boards printed at Uniprint. We then glued the map to the foam board and installed the eye hooks into the wood and foam board. Our original plan was to have our string spools on dowels to the left of the levels of intensities, but the foam board was unable to hold the dowels. Because of this, we pivoted to gluing a piece of the string next to each level so the printed information still make sense, and then placed the string spools on the table.
We installed the installation on April 9th in Timashev (the Ohio State School of Music building) on a wall in between the bathrooms and left it up until April 18th and here are the results:
Data Analysis
We received a total of 105 responses. From here, we counted all of the responses and identified any trends or abnormalities we found.
Some trends that we found:
- Passive Entertainment was interacted with the most.
- Procrastination leading to Distraction got more responses than leading to Inspiration.
- Most connections were made between distraction and passive entertainment. 35-1 distraction over inspiration.
- Most interactions were red string so overall, not a lot of responders considered their procrastination to be low intensity.
- Most connections were made to distraction rather than inspiration.
- More demanding activities (productivity, interactive entertainment, movement) led to feelings of inspiration.
- Procrastination leading to Distraction got more responses than leading to Inspiration.
- Most connections were made between distraction and passive entertainment. 35-1 distraction over inspiration.
- Most interactions were red string so overall, not a lot of responders considered their procrastination to be low intensity.
- Most connections were made to distraction rather than inspiration.
- More demanding activities (productivity, interactive entertainment, movement) led to feelings of inspiration.
Some abnormalities/feedback we found:
- We were surprised that the substances category had more inspiration interactions than distraction.
- Many people didn't put the scissors back and left string scraps around the table.
- Some users connected strings between different nations
- Many people didn't put the scissors back and left string scraps around the table.
- Some users connected strings between different nations
Our final data collection:
