Week 1: Ideation
From the beginning, I was looking for the statistics I wanted to represent (from the sustainable development goals on the United Nations website). After a few iterations, I decided that I just needed to choose one and start iterating. I chose one about adult obesity.
The New Zealand Health Survey 2019/20 found that:
around 1 in 3 adults (aged 15 years and over) were obese (30.9%)
the prevalence of obesity among adults differed by ethnicity, with 63.4% of Pacific, 47.9% of Māori, 29.3% of European/Other, and 15.9% of Asian adults obese
adults living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas were 1.8 times as likely to be obese as adults living in the least deprived areas
Taken from the Sustainable Development goals website. （https://www.health.govt.nz/nz-health-statistics/health-statistics-and-data-sets/obesity-statistics?mega=Health%20statistics&title=Obesity）
As I thought, at first I wrote the idea on paper, and I realized it wouldn't work. There are too many statistics to represent effectively. So, I chose a more intuitive number to express the obesity rate of New Zealand adults
It is estimated that about one-third of adults (aged 15 and over) will be obese in 2019, accounting for 30.9%.
Taken from the Sustainable Development goals website. （https://www.health.govt.nz/nz-health-statistics/health-statistics-and-data-sets/obesity-statistics?mega=Health%20statistics&title=Obesity）
Sketching out some ideas based on this I came up with a few points that I wanted to show:
It shows that it is 30.9%.
It shows that 30.9% of New Zealand adults are obese because this is their idea.
Week 2: Scripting and Iteration
After getting some feedback from the class I started scripting. Creating a version, then expanding from there, splitting into multiple variations later.
The first script version. My idea is that the big black ball represents the obese people over the age of 15 in New Zealand, and then I use 31 small balls to represent that 30.9% of the obese people in New Zealand (over 15 years old) have changed from a small black ball to 31 small black balls from the right.
I tried to drop the big black ball from above, not from below. In this way, the visual effect will be more obvious. Then there were some small problems in the design process. I thought to turn the big black ball into a small black ball in the middle after it fell from the top, but the effect was not so good. Every time I save the animation, I enter the same FrameCount + "" I + ". PNG, there will be some small problems and the new code cannot be saved.
I began to make 31 small balls, indicating that 30.9% of the obese people in New Zealand (over 15 years old) have changed from a small black ball to 31 small black balls from the right.
Through these feedback, they think the effect of these 31 small black balls is good. I tried to add something, but I haven't figured it out yet. But I'm still very satisfied with this version. So I tried the next step.
I tried to drop these 31 balls and let them melt away.
But I realized that when the ball fell, it fell from the top. It didn't have the effect I expected. I hope it can have a certain elasticity.
In order to melt 31 balls, I tried to make them fall into a line. I tested the whole project. It was a simple treatment. Although not so obvious.
At this time, I decided to add my facts to the animation and edit the text to express the obesity rate of 30.9%. But the text may be a little fast, and the stay time is not long enough. I will go in and modify it again.
Finally, I modified it to make the text stay longer and clearer.
Week 3: The Final Week
I spent more time on this project during this week than any of the other weeks. First I did some more work on the versions of the animation, following the feedback I gained from this week’s class. Then most of my time was spent polishing the final project.
After receiving feedback on my two versions, this one is more effective in showing the story, although it is not very good in showing that it is 30.9%, which is not very good at showing obesity.
Further, I decided to turn 30.9% into 31 small balls, make it a circle, and then slowly fill 31 small balls into black balls. I decided to keep this version, which can highlight the data of 30.9%.
I tried making 31 small balls fall and make them elastic when they fall. This involves a probability that we haven't learned in class. I found a lot of videos and books to learn from. The goal of this probability is to make the ball elastic when it falls. I tried several times and could only let the whole ball fall, not let them fall scattered.
I listened to the suggestion and considered the problem of inflation. I let the falling 31 balls fall Inflation is better. After inflation, it will slowly rise to 30.9%.
I still wanted to show that 30.9% of the square in the center was better, so I decided to try this method. In this revision, I tried the font and letter size and found that it was the easiest to read.
Finally, I modified another version according to the comments, which can highlight 30.9%.
Week 4: The Final Week
This gave me 2 variations on the animation that I was to choose for my final submission.
I decided to run these 2 by the instructors quickly and they confirmed my assessment that the latest version was the most effective.
Thus I reached my final design, which you can view here.
References:
1. Processing Foundation (n.d.). Processing.org. Retrieved 19 August 2021, from https://processing.org/
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