Watkins Web 3: Blog

James Muspratt
Apr 4

Project 2 Inspiration

Here’s a quick survey of dynamic projects that visualize data or assemble existing visual material to create something new:

More examples

Key questions for your project

Designing with data or material that is being generated “live” is different from designing known or static content. As with a blog, your job is to design template or “view” that adapts to whatever content it might contain in the future. How can your project re-frame the content by aggregating and re-presenting it? Can the user interact with the content in a meaningful way after it has loaded, by changing its display or switching from a macro view of all the content to a micro view of one piece of it?

Think of the web browser is a modern-day canvas with its own limitations, conventions, and user expectations. Which conventions/limitations do you want to embrace, and which do you want to play against? Think about the fundamentals of the web experience: links, scrolling, typography, images. How can you mix these elements to create something new, compelling, surprising, or delightful?

Possible data/material sources to consider

Possible user input/status

Auto detected

  • User’s local time of day (detected by PHP or jQuery)
  • User location (detected by PHP or jQuery)

User Choice

  • Color choice
  • Mood
  • Keyword / Search Term
  • Letter of the alphabet
  • Personal info (age, birth year, birth location)

Visualization Elements and Axes

  • Images
  • Type (scale, font-choice, color)
  • Layout
  • Sequence

Further Reading/Watching