Niki Marathia
Previous
UX of text
Week 2 of 2
Team
Text is everywhere; on screens, in books, in bodies, on walls. We read it, write it, scroll past it, speak it aloud. Text can be formal or fragmented, poetic or practical, loud or invisible. It carries meaning, shapes behaviour and builds connection. It is both container and content. Design an experience that reveals the materiality of text.

Research methods:
Affinity diagramming, data physicalisation
Andre Dinis
Eric Chen
Eryue Wan
Kai Lin
Luis Winkelbrandt
Niki Marathia

Overall, we collected notes from seven participants. Five of them were handwritten, and two were written on the Notes app. I also wrote two diary entries like I would in a regular diary, so we could compare them to lecture notes as well. We conducted workshops separately, so we collated information about our participants to familiarise each other with everyone who did the workshop (Figure 1).  

Figure 1. Information about our participants.


The notes we collected:

Figure 2. Participant 1.
Figure 3. Participant 2.
Figure 4. Participant 3.
Figure 5. Participant 4.
Figure 6. Participant 5.
Figure 7. Participant 5 (back).
Figure 8. Participant 6.
Figure 9. Participant 7.
Figure 10. Diary entry 1.
Figure 11. Diary entry 2.
We did the same exercise as last week, but this time, we traced the notes on clear plastic sheets for better visibility. We did this to help us identify typographic rules that people follow unconsciously when taking notes, however, we did not get as much value out of it as we had hoped. Having traced them in black marker, we found that neither typography nor layout stood out.

Figure 12a. Hanging the traced notes.
Figure 12b. Observing the traced notes for patterns in typography or layout.
We decided to try a new approach for analysing the typography and layout in the notes collected. We placed a large tracing paper over the notes and encoded the elements within them. Underlined text, capitalisation, arrows, bullet points, hyphens, punctuation marks, and numbers were all accounted for.

Figure 13. Encoding our notes.


Our aim was to quantify these elements to use them in our data physicalisation (Figure 14). However, we were steered away from approaching the research method this way, so we decided to try something new.

Figure 14. First attempt at data physicalisation.


Instead of encoding the notes ourselves, we asked our classmates to do it for us. We were curious to see what they would come up with doing it with fresh eyes and bringing new perspectives. Our ask was to reimagine the text as if there were no words but only visuals (Figure 15).

Figure 15. Our classmates reimagine the notes using visuals.


We liked these layouts, so we decided to create them again based on the same note. This way, we could look for similarities in the hierarchy, shapes, and flow that people use to organise the page. The note we selected for this purpose (Figure 16) had a good balance between structure (date, title, sections, bullet points) and text, which we thought made it versatile for this exercise.

Figure 16. The note we used for our data physicalisation.


We printed eight copies of the note in its original A5 size and asked our classmates to reimagine it as if there was no text, just visuals.

Figure 17a. Reimagining our layout with visuals. Taken by Luis Winkelbrandt.
Figure17b. Reimagining our layout with visuals. Taken by Luis Winkelbrandt.
This time, we got a good mix of diagrams and pictograms to compare (Figure 18).  

Figure 18. Four of the eight layouts reimagined with visuals.¹


Below are scans of all the layouts we collected:

Figure 19. Layout 1.
Figure 20. Layout 2.
Figure 21. Layout 3.
Figure 22. Layout 4.
Figure 23. Layout 5.
Figure 24. Layout 6.
Figure 25. Layout 7.
Figure 26. Layout 8.

Data physicalisation

We used these layouts in our second attempt at data physicalisation. By layering them, we wanted to show the different journeys people create when replacing text with visuals.

Figure 27. Second attempt at data physicalisation.


We tried a third approach as well, this time sewing thread through a notebook. We wanted to show how the same information was reimagined in different ways in our layouts, sometimes through lines, and other times by being being grouped in clusters.

Figure 28. Third attempt at data physicalisation.


We scanned the notebook pages to see what it would look like and got a nice result:

Figure 29. Scan of our third attempt at data physicalisation.



Final idea

These attempts helped us develop the concept of materialising one of our layouts by creating an installation out of it. We imagined using the layout as a blueprint by attaching string around its outlines (Figure 30).

Figure 30. A sketch of the concept for physical experience. Drawn by Luis Winkelbrandt.


We chose the layout shown in Figure 31 because we liked that it had a mix of geometric shapes and lines, spread evenly throughout the page.

Figure 31. The note we chose to materialise.


Using tissue paper and string in corresponding colours, we made our prototype so it would hang from the ceiling.

Figure 32. Creating sections using the layout as a blueprint.
Figure 33. Attaching string and tissue paper on a base.
Figure 34. Flipping the prototype after all material is attached.
Figure 35. Top view of our installation.
Figure 36. Inside our installation.
Figure 37. Seeing through our installation.
Figure 38. Video 1 of the installation.
Figure 39. Textures, colours, and light within the installation.

Figure 40. Video 2 of the installation.


Room for growthWe struggled finding the right formula for data physicalisation, as none of our attempts were quite right. Data physicalisations transform data into meaningful representations (Buur et al., 2021), yet we were not entirely sure what we were representing. Being steered away from what we had in mind in our first attempt was the right call, as it represented data without helping communicate it further. Perhaps had we had a clearer idea of what we wanted to say with our second and third attempts, they may have been more impactful.

Our installation was praised for being bold during our presentation, however, in our feedback, it was noted that it needed finessing. In addition to it looking neater aesthetically, I think that if we were to develop it further, we would need to test what users can do within the installation.

Throughout our process, we kept asking ourselves what it is that we are designing, and who it is for (Figure 41). We approached the project in an explorative way and were able to collect various data, but we were not always sure why we were looking for these outcomes. I decided to look for some answers to the questions ‘we found things out - what?’ and ‘why does it matter?’ through my critical essay. I analysed the layouts we collected by considering the kinds of understanding they facilitate in the absence of text. I found that these insights can be useful in contexts where complex information must be communicated simply through a combination of visuals and words.
Figure 41. Relections about our project.


SourcesBuur, J., Sorenson, J., Cooper, C.M. (2021) ‘Big data and small beginnings: How people engage with data physicalizations’, Nordes: Nordic Design Research, 9, pp. 249–258. Available at: https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2021.27

Notes¹To extend the background in Figure 18, I used Photoshop’s AI Generative Fill tool. The subject was not edited or altered.