This assignment came at the perfect time – it’s a very very busy month and I really need to improve my media diet. The goal of my media diary is to determine a media consumption routine that is the most productive(towards dissertation research).
Diary: see screenshots below or see interactive diary here
the key: to mimic a hand-drawn feel, I used hatch marks. The messier the mark, the less productive.
total days: 1 – 7, from last Wednesday, I went on a ill-timed vacation
productivity is highest in early – mid morning
overall I am not productive 🙁
I work at the lab or on the train
Parameters: The media I measured are what inputs I get, not what I make(those are tracked in a spreadsheet already).
Collection: After using rescuetime for a few days, I decided against it because it’s automatic recordings didn’t allow me to reflect on what I consumed. The method I found most helpful was to hand record as I go throughout the day. After the first few days, I adapted my notes into a google form(left) so that I can input directly from my phone into a standard format.
The format of my recording results in a spreadsheet with columns for date, time, media, productivity, who I am with, part of day, duration, place, and a short description.
Visualization: I chose this assignment to write a simple reusable visualization module and experiment with opening up visualizations to others on github. Inspired by “Dear Data”, I made a simple spreadsheet to sortable hatch marks visualization.
It is really still a work in progress.
Conclusions: I am pretty predicable. I look at Instagram and online shop throughout the day. I am most productive in the lab, on the train, and in the early mornings.
There is so much I want to do for this visualization. Changing the labels, adding more notes, increasing the clarity with some modifications, and using google spreadsheets directly instead of a downloaded spreadsheet. This repo I made for code in the project is working. (without the key panel)