So I’ve been working on senior project for a few weeks now, and didn’t really have a solid direction until last week, when I decided information graphics would be fun. So I first made a series of graphs comparing the use of different forms of communication from the time you’re a baby to the time you’re in your early twenties (since that’s as long as I’ve been alive, and it’s really all I know).

So I liked the idea of information design so much I decided to think of other ways to design information and I started thinking about time. I never wear a watch so telling time involves taking out my cell phone and checking it. Thing is, sometimes you don’t even really care what time it is, you just care if you’re early or late. So I started thinking of all these situations where they give you a list of times and all you want to know is, ‘how soon is the next one?’. So in situations where there is a list of times that things start, you really only check the time to find out if you can make it or if you’ve missed it. So for instance, when I’m waiting for a bus to come, I don’t much care what time it is, but I’m forced to check the time to see if I’ve missed the bus or how soon the next one is coming. So I decided to make a series of clocks that have the bus schedules built into them. Rather than tell you the time, it only has an hour hand with AM/PM rings with ticks for when the bus is coming. If the hour hand is coming up on a line, that means the corresponding bus will be there next. Thankfully, at UConn, the bus lines are colored which made this even easier.

So this clock shows that if it was AM, blue line would be here shortly, and if it was PM, red line is just a few minutes away. Not sure if this is going to be the final data presentation, but I have a real direction! I’m also trying to work it out for use as a weekly scheduler and perhaps to show movie times, and if it was possible to digitize the thing it would be sweet because it would be so easily updated for train and airplane schedules (since they’re updated with such frequency as to require it to be a computerized updating system).