We have been tasked with creating a diagrammatic dashboard that presents a set of data from a week in our life.
The data that I choose to track is going to be very important in this project as I believe it will influence greatly the design needs and style of the final product. As a diagrammatic dashboard, data will be priority so I must focus on the best ways to present the data. The dashboard will of course feature diagrams and charts as this is a requirement, but I want to explore how else I can present data. Choices such as opting to use numbers in place of words improve the effectiveness of communicating what the data says and it is choices like this which I want to implement.
Going off the back of UXD103 and my own personal life, as well as the current climate, I feel it may be a good choice to explore money, more specifically my own money. When creating the bank brand I had a chat with Daniel regarding my banks values and mission statement, we ended up touching on the current state of the economy and how it seems to global issue. I believe if I were to present my own finances, as someone who has recently made it a priority to maximise my finances, I may be able to gather some interesting trends that reflect the market at an unusual time.
Collecting the data shouldn’t be too complicated as I should be able to refer back to transaction history and my savings accounts present the data in a diagrammatic form already. I feel it is important to add some data unrelated to me as this project is not just about my own finances but rather using my own finances as an example of a regular persons finances during a poor economy. Implementing data such as currency strength which is applies to everyone will add a further perspective to how the market is at that time.
I started by tracking my own spending using my banking apps, my savings using the chart offered by the app I use, the status of my investment funds over the course of the week using their own appropriate sites. Finally I tracked the strength of seven different currencies over this same week period. I felt seven would be a nice number to use as it will match the number of days I am tracking. I tracked these using an appropriate website. The sources for these numbers can be found below.
British Pound - Quote - Chart - Historical Data - News
Vanguard Asset Management | Personal Investing in the UK | Vanguard UK Investor
Once I had figured out where to source my data from I begin logging it down. I did so using pen and paper. This process doesn’t look like much but it was quite time consuming and monotonous. I have a new found appreciation for those who collect data regularly, I wonder if there is any tools that could optimise the process. Anyways here is the data that I will be presenting on my dashboard.
Something that came up that I hadn’t considered was that a lot of financial data cannot be sourced over the weekend as markets are closed. Whilst this means I have a little bit less data to work with I also get to present the fact that the market is closed, perhaps I could develop an icon for this purpose. It is an interesting consideration that opens up unique ways of interpretation.
As I mentioned before the nature of the data will no doubt have influence over how it is presented. So keeping in mind that all of the data being presented is in regards to money, I plan to look at how we currently present this type of data. The first thing that comes to mind and it’s a big one, is stock exchanges. The New York Stock Exchange has produced some of the most iconic imagery of the 21st Century, typically surrounding market crashes. I think somewhere like this could be a good place to source some style. The NYSE has some iconography that really stands out to me. The huge screens plastered with red and green instantly let you know the mood and attitude of those at the exchange that day, if the room is glowing red, odds are folks aren’t in the best of moods. I think this could be a great avenue to explore when designing the dashboard.
