This weeks lecture covered different ways of visualizing data from Egyptian hieroglyphs ****to modern presentations such as a heat map.

I found the different ways to visualize data very interesting such as the heat map or bubble chart, there was also more basic ones I am familar with such as a bar and line chart. I also really liked the idea of the donut pie chart I find it so much more visually appealing than a standard piechart. I think I may use a donnut pie chart if I create a piechart in my dashboard project.

Something else what I found very useful was the guides for creating charts such as how in a bar chart you should space each bar half a bar apart and to keep all bars the same colour. All this is to ensure there is no confusion with the user understanding the data, which would be the last thing I would want

Data Do’s and dont’s

This is another section covered in the lecture I found very useful which I will defiantly use this as a check list when continuing on my Data project. Some key points I will make sure to use is to limit my colour palate and not to use high contrasting colours, use icons to reduce labelling. I found the term ‘chart junk’ quite funny which I did not expect designers to include random illustrations etc among data but this was something I defiantly would never do.

What have I learned?

This week I have learned new ways I can visualize data and ways I can make them more visibly appealing. I found the checklist and dos and dont’s very useful which I will defenatly look back at this to make sure I follow everything to ensure my data is visually appealing and not confusing for the user.

I found it very interesting how data has changed throughout the years and how simplified data deign has got compared to ancient hieroglyphs.