The Making of “Can YOGA Ease Your Mind?”
Data Visualization Project 2—Benefits of Yoga
I sit on my mat in easy pose, right shin crossed in front of the left. Move the flesh from under my sit bones and connect to the earth, pelvis neutral, hands on my knees, and elongate the spine. Shrug my shoulders back and down away from my ears, lift and open my chest, and close my eyes. These are just a few of the adjustments that I make as I settle in for my practice. Breathing through my nose, I breath in — four, three, two, one — I breath out — four, three, two, one, and repeat for a few cycles of breath. Hands to my heart in prayer position, and set the intention for my practice. The day melts away. My mind quiet. My thoughts still. I feel ease.
The Assignment, the Story
Project 2. In my grad school class “Introduction to Info Graphics and Data Visualization,” Prof. Alberto Cairo tasked us with visualizing a story of our choice. I thought about this one a lot, trying to find something relevant today for which I felt a connection. I kept coming back to yoga.
2020 has been a difficult year to say the least, not just for me, but I imagine for most, nationally and globally. Life can be challenging even in our best years—juggling family and work life, balancing duty and play. Now add the exhaustion of the last four years of political chaos compounded with a global pandemic (unreal). Overwhelming.
In this last year, our lives at times have seemed unrecognizable, living in isolation, accompanied by unwelcome companions—fear and worry. Through it all, my yoga practice and yoga classes—via Zoom of course—have helped me physically, emotionally and mentally.
So I chose to share yoga. Maybe it can help others as well.
The Data
But how was I going to share yoga? I knew I wanted to share the benefits, but the topic is broad and yoga poses plentiful. After much research, I stumbled upon a wonderful guide to poses by benefits written by Yoga Journal. This gave me the basis for my main dataset, ultimately narrowing the focus on mental and emotional well-being, while pointing out some physical benefits for issues that may be related. Additionally, I found an informative article on yoga practitioner trends that included stats on practicing for stress relief to relaxation by Eventbrite, “The Rise of Yoga Events: New Data on How to Grow Your Yoga Business.”
The Proposal and the Audience
As I started to compile the data, I could begin exploring how to share the data visually.
- Pictograms or Illustrations to show the top beneficial yoga poses.
- Heatmap or Chord Diagram comparing poses by benefits. Encoding: color hue.
- Tree map or Bar chart comparing yoga trends by percentages. Encoding: Bar thickness, length and color shade. (This later became pie chart multiples. Encoding: color hue.)
- If space allows, include a chart of recommend poses by level of practice—beginner, intermediate, advanced. (Due to space restrictions, this was omitted, but the levels were added to the illustration captions.)
- If space allows, include a sidebar with my own personal yoga practice data. (Due to space restrictions, this also was omitted)
At this point I was still compiling data and aware some charts and sections may need to change.
Design and Critiques
For the assignment, the collateral includes a print piece 11" x 17" and a companion mobile layout.
For the design, I opted for a mostly cooler color palette and minimal detail illustrations for a more relaxed feel to compliment the theme. The illustrations were drawn in Procreate, freehand using photographs for a more natural feel.
With the first draft critique, the audience for the story was refined to beginner yoga practitioners or those not familiar with the practice. This led the design to include a shorter list of poses in the chord diagram to allow space for illustrations of all poses presented, but with more benefits listed to provide additional information. This path also meant resorting the data, which resulted in a revised list of poses for the following drafts.
With the second and third critiques a color background behind the illustrations was recommended rather than a thin outline that was suggested looked more like placeholders rather than intentional. Adding the background color both highlighted the illustrations and polished the overall design. And a little more detail in the form of darker color elements was added to the illustrations to make vague areas more understandable, as well as adding a minimal shadow under the drawings to ground them.
The final draft though barely distinguishable from the previous version at a distance, was all about the very fine details. Though I had already focused a lot on the details, this is stage of the design while slightly maddening is a very satisfying process for me. There is always more to refine. Are the fonts consistent, are the colors consistent, is everything in alignment and proportionate, nudge to the left, nudge to the right, drop it down, move it up, and so on and so forth. This can take several hours. And suddenly, it is time to stop (or at least until I look at it again later–and back down the rabbit hole I go).
Reflections—Data Leads Design
Keep Your Eye on the Audience
With the first draft, I wanted to share as many beneficial poses as possible, which ultimately included a list of 50 poses. But as soon as I completed the rough draft, I thought surely it might not be of great use for someone starting out in yoga. They would not know what the poses meant. So I created a second version of the first draft which would allowed for more illustrations. But which would I use?
Then the aha moment came during the critique. I explained my dilemma and concern with the first option. It seems all along I thought of my audience as everyone. And that is okay. But it turns out that my two layout options were both acceptable, just useful for two different audiences. (Mind blown! It’s so obvious. Right? With focusing on so many details, an outside perspective can make clear what is right front of you.) The first option with fewer illustrations and longer list of poses would benefit seasoned yogis. They would understand the poses without the drawings. The second option would be useful for all but even more so beginners unfamiliar with the poses. Either layout was fine; it was up to me to choose my audience.
The Data
It was eye-opening after compiling and digging into the data. I have practiced regularly for several years. With the understanding that I have much to learn about the practice, I was pleasantly surprised by the findings. Some of the simplest, most accessible poses had the most benefits. This reinforced for me that data has much to reveal beyond our preconceived notions. And as the findings are revealed then the design can be started, reinforcing to me that the data leads the design.
