Data Portrait

Description

You Are What You Listen To, 2020

Hover mouse over colored dot. Days are measured in columns (Day 1 = far left, Day 7 = far right). The dots in each column represent the songs played that day.

For the data portrait, I tracked every song I listened to on Spotify for 7 days. It was extremely interesting to notice my listening habits (ie. repeating new songs on loop and listening to new discoveries via "Made For You"). It was interesting to see this listening pattern represented in an abstract graph-like visualization.

Design Process

I converted the .csv google sheets file into JSON and worked with for loops, mouseX + mouse Y location, setInterval(), and played with loadFont to create this visual. Since the data points were represented by flashing dots, I decided to put a consent disclaimer at the beginning of the sketch and utilized the DOM button to continue to the next scene.

Click here to view the code.
Click here to see the data spreadsheet.

Reflection

As mentioned above, I enjoyed seeing the visual mapping of time and the frequency of music-listening during the week. It acted almost like a diary entry, a listening time capsule. I enjoyed revisiting the consentful interface in this assignment and it got me thinking about how to be considerate and accomodating to a variety of users. I feel that this data visualization outcome was fairly simple. It would be great to experiment with motion or other functions to uncover further insights about the data.