The data collection process that I underwent for this project was a unique learning experience, and allowed me to take a deep look into certain aspects of my life. This was a new type of experience for me, as even though I have analyzed relatively extensive data in the past, I had never gathered and examined data about myself. Firstly, the long term data that I collected over a five day span regarded my day-to-day worries. I looked at what these worries were about, how realistic they were, and whether or not I had control over these stresses. To keep track of this data, I made a quick note on my phone’s notes app every time I worried about something, and then at night, I would plot this data on my worksheet, using the key provided. Taking notes on my phone made it easy for me to keep an accurate record of my worries, since my phone is almost always on me and the notes I jotted down were short and simple. For the first time ever, I was paying close attention to every worry that crossed my mind, and admittedly, these worries were more frequent than I had hoped. I learned that my worries don’t stretch across too many categories, that is, I find myself stressing over the same few things, a habit that I am now trying to break. These worries were often out of my control or unrealistic, demonstrating how I most likely did not need to be worrying about these things. While this project did show me that I worry more than I would like, one positive that did arise from this experience was that I found myself shutting down my needless worries quicker than I normally would, since I was more hyper-focused on these worries than normal. This helped me become less anxious over the week that I tracked my data, and I am going to try to keep this habit in my daily life from now on.
As for my short term data that I gathered in one sitting, I tracked how my five favorite songs made me feel. Narrowing down my top five favorite songs was certainly difficult, but I eventually settled on five songs that I truly could not live without. Every fifteen seconds of each song, I plotted what emotion that portion of the song evoked in me, as well as the intensity of this emotion. I also used various symbols to note memorable moments and standout lyrics of each song. Here, I found that most of my favorite songs were on the sadder side, with emotions such as sadness and nostalgia coming up very frequently. This may be because these are the songs that resonate with me the most, or because my favorite artists typically produce more emotional songs. Focusing on each of these songs gave me a new appreciation for some of my favorite music, allowing me to realize just how much emotion was packed into these songs.
In depicting these two groups of data, I took two different approaches. My worries were represented three dimensionally by a flower made out of clay, with petals symbolizing worries out of my control, and leaves standing for worries in my control. I used different colors and shapes to further distinguish the type and category of worry. I felt that this model was fitting, because just like the leaves and petals of a blossoming flower, worries come in all different sorts, and are always subject to growth or change. On the other hand, my music data was represented on paper, with more of a graphical feel. The dots reflecting the intensity of the emotion from each song were connected, and then different emotional segments were colored underneath these points. This changed my perspective on data, as I now realize how many ways data can be represented. Before this project, I had only ever thought about data from a scientific standpoint, using formal graphs and charts. However, I now see the vast possibilities for visualizing all different sorts of data. Overall, this project provided me with new insight about my personal life, and opened my eyes to creative types of data visualization that stray from the traditional methods of depicting data.
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