For our first studio exercise we were split into groups and given a series of questions to answer, we used a wall of the studio to pin our name to with our answers connected by yellow wool. We then proceeded to take a different colour to connect answers that were the same (ie. all the people whose favourite coffee is a mochacinno)
Our next step was to label and record each name with a number and each line connecting the similarities with a number also. This information gave us an opportunity to use the computer program 'Gephi' to visualise the data in another form and to experiment with layouts to find which way we found the data easiest to understand.
From reviewing the many ways our group members chose to visualise the same set of data we discussed which we found easiest to understand. In general we liked clear labels and a multitude of techniques to show which were the most commonly occurring nodes, examples of this were labels or nodes that increased in size as they became more frequent. Colour was also a very effective way of separating the most and least popular nodes and made for an attractive looking visualisation. Finally the least cluttered layouts were far less confusing as densely overlapping lines were hard to follow to their source and generally counter productive to an easy to read presentation.
Unfortunately my own presentation wasn't correctly saved and as a result I no longer have the file to review but I do hope to experiment with Gephi again as I think it was quite an effective data communicating tool
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