Weekly Sprint 06 — Paper Prototype
This week I focused more on how the physical display will look. Things I considered were materials and colors. First off, I created a small scale version of the graduation caps for a fast visual mockup. These were simply made out of card stock and varying in size of color, to give me an idea of how I can arrange them in the final display. I had an idea of projecting the personal text statements I collected from my survey on a wall around the physical display. Working off of that, another option would be to project onto the mortar boards of the graduation caps. For a dynamic element, the projections could loop through all the statements.
As for materials, I am thinking about making the caps out of wood. In the digital fabrication class, there are examples of kerf cut wood, which is wood cut in a certain way that allows it to bend. This can be achieved with patterns cut through a laser cutter, so I will look more into this. I can see this being useful to create the circular bases of the caps depending on how flexible they can be.
Moreover, the work I did for my data visualization final project was also helpful towards thesis. I used the Factbook data I gathered from CEI for thesis and input some of the datasets into Tableau. Below is a screenshot of the line graph visualization for Race of Enrolled Undergraduate Students. The interactive graph can be viewed with the rest of the datasets I created on my Tableau Public profile. I plan to create a physical version of this using foam board and string that will be displayed on wall. I intend for this graph to be clean and minimal so that the colors of the string stand out.
I also spent some time choosing yarn colors which took longer than expected because I am super picky. As mentioned in my previous post, the yarn will be used to create the physical line graph as well as be assigned to to represent a race/gender/sexual orientation in the tassels.
Some other things I have to consider for this display are lighting, positioning, and creating keys that show what each element, color, etc. represents on the graphs/objects. My display could simply sit on the floor or on a table, but there is also the option to suspend/hang objects from the ceiling. I will have to determine if this is feasible if I am planning to use a projector. I will also need to check out the installation space I was assigned to in order to get dimensions for this wall graph. I will be sharing this space with other students, so that will also affect how much area I have for the display, since I plan to use some space that extends out from the wall. We will need to get together and discuss our projects and how we each plan to use the room.
