Ok so thinking about progressing with by brief, as I mentioned previously I have been looking into such existing solutions such as Digg Labs and the work of San Francisco Design & technology studio Stamen Design. I think these two examples, especially Digg Labs echo more relevantly how a data visualisation could be designed and implemented because the applications are dealing with similar data structure to myself. Another area of inspiration comes from the work of Ben Fry, although I feel his work reflects more aesthetic purposes in the form of ’sketches’ as opposed to more relevant applications such as the ones built for Digg. Taking inspiration from these and looking into how they are implemented I feel that my application would be most appropriate being developed in Flash. My experience also leads me to this conclusion because of the nature of my project, whereby this is to be published online and hence I turn to Flash as an industry standard. An alternative standard could also be Processing, however I feel I have a better understanding of ActionScript and so I think this would allow me to build a more effective working solution.

When researching into other examples of data applications I came across this example on the processing website http://carohorn.de/anymails/ This application is actually quite relevant to my purpose and deals with visualising an entire email client, which is done very very well. I especially find the areas of depth quite interesting, whereby the emails are conveyed as almost living entities. Furthermore these entities visually decay as time progresses and the email gets older. These are the types of things I want to consider in my own application and as I develop through the design and implementation stages.

There are a number of different features that I think I should take into consideration at this time which can potentially reflect the outcome of my solution. Such issues as ’should it be interactive?’ I feel is an important question to raise and I can perhaps look into the possibility of adapting the interface so the user engages with the data more directly.

Below is a preliminary design taking into consideration what data I have, and I think the most relevant information to address is the recorded ‘top open rate subject lines’ and likewise the ‘low open rate subject lines’. I feel in this situation if users can see examples o the more appropriate subject lines then they are more likely to take more away from their research than a written textual conclusion or a range of percentages for example.

In this design I have the idea of each of the subject lines and their open rate percentage to animate onto the stage randomly and thereafter continue to move in a random fashion and perhaps interact with other subject lines in turn. Notice here how I have divided the best and worst vertically to visually separate the data for easy viewing.

If I were to think about this idea as interactive I could consider the possibility of having the user click any of the subjects (denoted by a ball/icon), which then expands to reveal more information and comments on that particular stat.

From here I’d like to think more about how I can represent the other annual information with a view to making links between them.

My posts have been a little slow this week, so I am going to take the opportunity to just put out a quick update with what i am up to and to also introduce a couple of other projects I am involved with.

for those that are not aware, this year I feel proud to have stepped in as Editor of Streetgraphic; the online creative arts magazine and now we are underway with 2nd year University, Streetgraphic has taken on 3 members, Lee, Emma and Lewis who I feel have already brought a weight of commitment and productivity to the magazine and I am looking forward to the months ahead. Please feel free to visit us at http://www.streetgraphic.com.

I am also currently thinking about setting up a Streetgraphic event in the near future and am having a meeting tomorrow regarding location so I’ll be sure to keep a log here of our progress.

As well as Streetgraphic, I am excited to be involved with the upcoming Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, for which I am implementing the event’s motion piece to be aired between the 16th and 25h November. Things are going well and I feel this experience has already helped to develop my skill set in this area and I feel fortunate to have met some great people along the way.

Haha, ok this is amazing, I have just received an email……ok wait stop I’ll jump back a few days.

After my first initial thoughts last week I did some more research around the idea of ‘Re:’ and thought about how I can apply this term to industry facing technologies! Luckily this inspiration came straight from FOWA and from a talk held on the Entrepreneur stage entitled ‘Next Generation Visualisations’. Actually I’ll make a point of posting some of the work I saw there later on as I could use that for reference.

I started to think how I can apply this to ‘Re:’ and if instead of setting up a portal and a discussion between peers, if I could alternatively approach a real world company and implement it for them! (I am all for applying my thoughts to real world situations, and getting that experience now!). My research lead me to some interesting fields and to two websites in particular:

http://www.emailstatcenter.com/SubjectLines.html
http://www.mailchimp.com/

Both are established in email marketing and metrics and thought these would be ideal clients to approach!

Getting back to the initial point I sent them an email outlining who I was, my project, my research into data visualisation and how it can benefit companies, drive traffic and engage users, my intentions and examples of my findings to date.

Haha, ok this is amazing, I have just received an email from the Co-Founder of the company who drives MailChimp as posted below:

“Anything nerdy, scientific, and visual. I’m all for it.
Let me know what you need. Plan ahead because it’ll take lots of pestering—we’re swamped, but we do want to help. I’m not sure if we posted it, but I do believe we have 2008 data as well.
Call me, or Mark with anything you need to get it done. We’re both co-founders here.
And yes, we’d post it on our site, and blog, and email newsletters. Make it look really, really cool.”

I am pretty excited about this now and can’t wait to get started!

“You are asked to complete a studio project that explore this concept.”

•    You should select appropriate media technologies to realise your ideas.
•    The work should reflect your personal interests and engage with your area of specialism.
•    The aim of this assignment is to ‘play’ with ideas and produce distinctive studio work by mixing critical theory with innovative application of digital technologies.

As briefed, I can design my own project which reflects a theme prefixed with the term ‘re’. I.e. Repeat, remake etc. The brief also conveys that I apply execute the project within an area of specialism. For me this is web-based, however using Flash and also After Effects I feel I can apply a range of skills to whatever specification my project requires.

My thoughts:

Return - Either based on the use of the keyboard key ‘Return’, or alternatively based on the theory of revisiting, and ‘time’.

Reposition - Changing location -  for better - for worse - for change

The two ideas above could be introduced into an interactive game, (perhaps using Flash.) However after my recent visit to FOWA, at some point over the course of this term I would like to explore the possibilities of AIR where possible, and these themes could allow me to do this and provide the user (player?) another dimension to interaction and play.

Re: - Relating to the term ‘Re:’ used as part of subjects within emails. This could take the form of a web portal whereby users can submit emails to a specified email account, or alternatively to each other perhaps based on a theme or topic. This could lead to electronic conversations much like emails. - Each email or message would then be stored with an associated Re response tag and therefore be interconnected to each other.

This tag could then be stored and, depending on the scope of this project I could feed this data into and xml file and even dynamically link the social attributes between them and furthermore present the data in an animation…

I feel this needs to be thought through further to better understand the possibilities, however I feel this covers a range of skill areas, especially those in my specialised area.

After wanting to attend the Future of Web Apps conference last year and unfortunately missing out, this year I am glad to say I am here and writing from a rather comfortable Microsoft bean-bag!

Things are amazing and I have met some really informative and exciting individuals, and furthermore have walked away from most talks feeling inspired and entrepreneurial!

For anyone who tracks Diggnation, be sure to check out their latest episode which they filmed here last night! (crazy stuff).

After which I attended the after party and after talking to a few fellow developers over a few nice free beverage (cheers Carsonified!) I began to realise how much Ruby on rails is taking over web development! so I can’t wait to explore that more.

Going to shoot now because break is almost over and this afternoon’s talks seem really intriguing. Peace out for now.