#and what the correlations are between my moods + social interaction/weather/etc

[haunthouse]

figured out how to do a color-block mood tracker in notion i am the king of formulas

[laurakazmeier]

Developing Idea

At this point I knew I wanted to focus on my own tracked data and the correlation between lifestyle factors and moods, and possibly show how mood affects how we see the world. I wanted to focus on lifestyle factors, as this is what I had tracked and I was interested I using my own data. But also because lifestyle factors (exercise, nutrition, sleep etc.), unlike the weather or the news, can largely be controlled. This might allow for the project to have some sort of educational and social value, creating awareness and helping people to better their moods. These are the main ideas I came up with:

More abstract way of depicting habits - all abstract shapes or colour + maybe use actual data from walks/running. Overall look of composition would say something about mood.

I came up with this idea where every lifestyle factor (exercise, sleep, nutrition etc.) was assigned a colour and turned into a gradient with white. The brighter the shade of the colour, the better it had been done that day. (Using the 1-5 scale from my journal, 1=very bad, 5=very good). I created some examples from different days to showcase what different days and moods would look like - the idea being, the brighter the overall look of the series of squares, the brighter the mood. I then created an example of what a week through these coloured squares could look like, and really liked how it could display your moods over a longer period of time in an interesting, approachable way. 

Overall, I was happy with this idea, but wanted to do something more different to what I’d seen, and less like common data visualisations. I felt this brief asked for something more outside of the box, and I was also interested in portraying the idea that mood affects our perceptions.  

Sound Idea - data of habits on a good day (good mood) and bad day/mood turned into sound. I wanted to record sounds of habits that influence mood such as exercise (running on a treadmill), nature sounds for being outside or some snoring for good sleep, and overlay them to create ‘The sound of a good mood/day’ and the sound of a bad day/mood’ Then I thought I might take the sound graph from this and turn it into a visual piece. 

Discarded this idea, as this probably wouldn't sound great, I wasn't that interested in using sound and don't have experience. I was also mostly worried it didn't meet the brief.

Transform data on factors that affect mood into an educational 3D interactive object. Something people can engage with, e.g. manually increase levels of exercise, sleep or nutrition by pressing buttons for instance to then change the mood of the thing. Could be a planet for example, people have to turn it for ‘exercise’ and it changes colour depending on mood. Like a game where the goal is to increase the planet’s mood. 

Paper Idea - Mood as a lens through which we see the world. My final idea was to cut abstract shapes out of paper, which corresponded to the most important lifestyle factors affecting mood. I would create cut out paper pieces and then photograph them outside or out the window. The idea was that the lower I had scored on different lifestyle factors which make up my mood, the smaller the shapes would be and the less could be seen through the cut out areas in the paper. In turn if I scored highly in a lot of the lifestyle factors/habits there would be more cut out space and one could see more of the world through the paper. In this way I wanted to show how mood changes the way we see the world.

Idea that  a bad mood affects your ability to step back and ‘see the whole picture,’ View your situation more objectively and be able to work through it. 

I decided to choose this as my final idea, as it incorporated all the research I was interested in, and I felt it answered the brief well. I was also excited at the prospect of doing some non-digital work, working out shapes and using my own data.