"Boredom" was a project I conducted with two other friends, wherein we wanted to create a more (literal) hands-on approach to surveys and data creation. As opposed to simply sending out a survey or questionnaire in order to attain data from a survey pool, we wanted to explore other means that would visualize the data in real time, be immersive and interactive for the user, collect data in an efficient and timely manner, and ultimately create a piece of work that is more beautiful than a simple excel document of numbers.
For the purposes of this experiment we explored very fundamental questions that all users can easily have input in; (1)gender (2)age (3)favorite time of day (4)Yes/No/Maybe (5)Introvert/Extrovert & (6)Dominant Hand. There were also some other more implicit data usages in play, in the form of string color choice. Participants of the survey would simply string the peg that most corrensponds with them, and tie the end, creating their own individual line of data.
We had the Data Installation up for 3 days total, and was able to garner 92 participants. The result was a series of data analyses that were surprisingly very in line with global data sources, with some environmental discrepancies (to count for the life of students in a university). All of this executed in a fun and colorful visual. Who knew chopsticks on a foam board with string could produce all of this at once.
Project
Installation | Data Design | Survey
Client
Personal Project
Year
2015
This quote from Joseph Brodsky fittingly summarizes why we chose the topic of asking simply fundamental questions in our Data Installation. The mere voidness of asking fundamental questions are ones rarely explored; yet, upon this mental void is an open field of exploration for oneself–an opportunity one has never actually opened themselves to.
Such is the paradox with fundamental truths–rarely challenged, so never faulted.
Prior to our decisions on the 6 questions, all participants in our group ran several mind-mapping exercises. Our goal in doing so was to dilute our questions into 6 categories that applied to all 3 of us. Essentially, a reduction in our respective thought patterns.
The next task was to create the system which would allow us to yield the best results for our survey. To do so we started with performing the survey amongst ourselves numerous times on a whiteboard.
We were also doing so to make sure the result of the work was still aesthetically pleasing to look at.
The result was an intricate system of strings of yarn that would bend and twist in a graph-like fashion. Users could touch a piece of string to follow the string along the installation and see the choices that other survey takers prior to them made as well.
Below are the results of the data we extracted from our survey.
