Project Development In the final stage of the project development the approach is to find a fruitful way to visualize the most important car characteristics. Pollution/co2 emissions, fuel consumption and (top)speed (the power and the size of the engine). The material and data have collected and organized in a table. The data are organized in car categories (passenger car, roadster, mvp, off road, pickup). For each category the minimum and the maximum car – due to engine size – selected. Each car got information in numbers about co2 emissions, fuel consumption and engine size and power. This table is the first organized information for my project. This table of data uses a visual abstracted and strict structure of information. Except this data set there is no other information, written or visual. This project’s intention is to find an alternative way to visualize the information given in numbers. In order to investigate and compare all the possible ways conveying this information a first diagram formed. The diagram in this case stands as a sketch, a collection of data. One of the most common diagrams is a bar diagram8. This bar diagram consists of three different elements: co2, fuel consumption and speed. All the elements are represented in the same way using a bar line. The only differentiation is in the color and of course in the length of the line. Using different colors it is easy to group and give a kind of identity for each of these elements. Color also adds readability to the diagram if not new information. There is no other differentiation except the color. The important element here that is added is the written description for each line. A line – bar could represent anything that has a given information in numbers. The only differentiation depends on the name that is given to it. So if for example in this diagram the red color was for vegetable consumption and each line for a different country then the meaning of this diagram would be definitely changed. The advantage/disadvantage of using this way to convey information is the neutrality or the absence of the visual context. According to Michael Friendly and Daniel J. Denis, between 1800 and 1850, “In statistical graphics, all of the modern forms of data display were invented: bar and pie charts, histograms, line graphs and time-series plots, contour plots, and so forth.” Do all these different visualization techniques have something in common? They all use spatial variables (position, size, shape, and more recently curvature of lines and movement) to represent key differences in the data and reveal most 8 A bar chart or bar graph is a chart with rectangular bars with lengths proportional to the values that they represent. The bars can be plotted vertically or horizontally. Bar charts are used for plotting discrete (or ‘discontinuous’) data which have discrete values and is not continuous. Some examples of discontinuous data include ‘shoe size’ or ‘eye color’, for which you would use a bar chart. In contrast, some examples of continuous data would be ‘height’ or ‘weight’. A bar chart is very useful if you are trying to record certain information whether it is continuous or not continuous data. Bar charts also look a lot like a histogram. They are often mistaken for each other.
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