View the online visualization here.
Design Statement
The topic for my Final project is based on the active minutes that I’ve had over the course of ten weeks. I chose this topic because of how easy would it is for me to obtain the data since it will be tracked through my Apple Watch. The Specific application that tracks my data is called Activity. The app connects to my watch and I can view the data on my IPhone, and it tracks my calories, Steps, exercise minutes and hours stood. I choose to narrow down this and only focus on the active minutes that I have over a 10-week period. Since the Apple Watch is also a heartrate monitor, it uses this data real time, along with other algorithms to determine if I’m active. The watch also has options that make adding effective minutes easier, by selecting the workout that you are doing then timing you until you are finished. The Activity app also tracks total active time which I decided not to use for my data visualizations because it will be based in a 24-hour format.
For the design choices that I used for my three visualizations we’re very simplistic with labels that help the viewer better understand the chart. For the first chart that goes over the average active minutes by day, I decided to format the data in a bar chart. I used colors that resembled the rainbow to bring in the cool factor for my chart. Another bar chart that I did add to my visualizations outlined how I became less active as the semester rolled on. I decided to use a bar graph for this data because of how the data if put into descending order clearly shows the trend. Lastly the Final chart I used was a pie chart but not in a traditional way. Usually pie charts are to show a whole of something split up into pieces to tell a story. I decided to use the pie chart to illustrate which job that I work during the week produces the most active minutes. I find the Bar charts more interesting out of the three charts because it clearly shows how active I try to be during the week.
I learned a lot from this data. Looking at the context of the situation I was also tracking my weight loss throughout the course of this time as well. So even though I did become lazier as the semester continued I still managed to lose weight despite that. What surprised me the most when looking at these data visualizations, is that I was able to start off my week strong for 10-weeks. If I were to continue this project I would go deeper into the fitness aspect of tracking my active minutes. I would add more columns that outline weather I went to the gym, took the bus to school, and any other subtopics that are related to me being active. The answers I felt I left unanswered are the exact details of what may attributed to my active minutes may have decreased over time. I wanted to add way to add weather temperatures to show how weather getting colder could attribute to me not being as active.