This semester I really enjoyed the imaging and data visualisation module and the tasks I got to complete. It allowed me to learn so many new things and develop new and existing skills and be able to create two projects which I would of never been able to of create when I started in September.

Within my first project which was music app I was able to show a little bit of my interests and my personality as I designed it around musical theatre music, something which I listen to daily and have a real passion for! I think this helped me create a real passionate piece and I spent a lot of time working on the little things to make it look as perfect as I could. I really enjoyed researching the existing music and podcast apps and being able to identify functions which could improved upon for my app or things I would like to incorporate into my own project. A lot of people would think that musical theatre is a real niche however there is so many people who love songs from musicals and don’t even realise it is from a musical so my app would allow them to discover their own passion for music.

Some of the trickier parts I found or didn’t enjoy as much was being able to established a defined layout for my app. The majority of music apps maintain the same layout and almost the same feel as at the end of the day they do the same thing which is playing music however I felt pushed to move away from the traditional look of apps such as Spotify. The end result is very much similar to the likes of Spotify but I feel it is slightly more unique as it has elements such as when you swipe the album in the middle is enlarged giving you more detail and information. Once I had established the layout and where the content is placed, I really enjoyed adding the smaller details and seeing the app come together.

The second project which was the infographic dashboard also had its really enjoyable but also it’s tougher points. I really enjoyed collecting the data for my dashboard as it allowed me to actually reflect on my lifestyle and almost analyse if I should be eating less sugar or exercising more so that was actually a really interesting aspect. What I also enjoyed is creating a really fun and vibrant colour palette that I felt represented both me as a person but also my data really well as I really wanted to feel really unique to me as after all it was based on me and a week in my life! Once my dashboard design was completed and the points brought up I’m my critique had been changed and corrected, I was able to add interactive elements to my designs using components and prototyping. I really enjoyed this as I had covered elements previously in my other module but being able to use those skills to create components for this app was really enjoyable. I also loved thinking about all the different ways I could add interactivity to my dashboard and then seeing how they looked once they had been implemented to my dashboard.

Some areas I struggled with or found less enjoyable was choosing what type of charts, graphs or infographics I should use to represent my data. I felt like I was always pushed to use the same similar types of graphs such as pie charts, line charts or bar graphs to represent my data and I continuously had to go back and change them to create a little bit of differentiation. I had researched so many different ways to represent data which I was excited to use, I just found it quite difficult to actually put them to use!

Overall I really liked the topics and design work we covered in this module and I know that there is a lot of elements which I will be able to apply to my work in the future such as creating an icon set, choosing type and colours and using imagery. As for the elements I struggled a little more on, I am going to work on practicing creating consistent layouts and how to lay out my designs on different devices over the summer break.