MAT 259 - 2008W




MOCK SUWANNATAT - Visualization of Most Popular Subject Words

Current Version

The program starts with a screen that shows the frequencies of the top 20 words in the subject field. Each bar graph represents the total volume of the word on the left.

When clicked, the bars get separated and rearranged into three sections: Morning, Afternoon, and Evening.

The source code can be downloaded here: mock-spl-src.zip (784 KB)


Older Versions

Here is a list of the older versions.

In this first version, continuous colors are used to represent time. The hue value varies from RED to GREEN. While this shows more information, the choice of color is misleading because red normally has a special meaning.

In the second version, I changed the color scheme, varying the intensity (brightness) instead of the hue value. The time was discretized into 4 different sections: 15 minutes each. Next, I brought in more data, taking in the data from the whole day. Time is divided into three sections. This view looks a bit bland. The color of each bar could be varied to show more information.
Design Decision

What will be chart out

Looking at the data from one whole day, I will visualize the frequencies of the top 20 subject words. I will divide them into 4 different time period: morning (6am - 12pm), afternoon (12pm - 6pm), evening (6pm - 12am), late night (12am - 6am) and display the frequency at each time period.

Size

size of display: 1000 x 500 pixels size of data: one day worth of data

What formal elements: grid, circles, shapes, color

I use horizontal bars to show the frequency. The color is used to show what time period it is in. Also, the bars will be divided into 4 sections for the 4 time periods. The bars in each time period will be left aligned with a vertical grid.

What value indicators: brightness, scale, color, etc

The horizontal length of a bar represents its frequency. The brightness of the bar's color represents the time period: morning = brightest, ..., late night = darkest.

Labels: time, items, keywords, etc.

On the vertical axis, I use labels to indicate the words that I visualize. There will be 20 lines of words on the left hand side. On the bottom, I will describe each time period with "morning", "afternoon", "evening", and "late night". I am deciding whether to put specific time period under those captions (e.g. should I put 12:00-18:00 under "afternoon"?). Finally, I will put a number next to each bar to indicate the exact frequency.

A pencil sketch