Mapping Information, Mapping Experience
For this assignment, I worked in a group of five to create an interactive, visual representation of an experience we all shared -- such as playing a game, or watching a movie. My team members were Vicky, Alan, Spencer, and Royal. We chose to map the experience of viewing the Hitchcock movie Rear Window. The assignment was to create an interactive map presenting multiple dimensions of an experience. There are three main components to our project: mapping a tangible experience, mapping an intangible experience, and having interactive opportunities for the viewer to explore.
Our project can be found here.
The tangible experience that we mapped were the sound waves of the film, as well as the background image of our final product – a representation of Jeff’s rear window view with depictions of the characters he observes, created by Spencer. Royal assembled the sound clips used for the various interactive points on our map, as well as the waveform of the audio throughout the film.
The intangible mapped experience were two emotional spectrums that reflected Vicky, Spencer, Royal, and my data. Every five minutes of the movie we ranked our levels of confusion and curiosity on a scale of 1-10, the lowest being clear and bored, respectively, and the greatest being confused and curious, respectively. These graphs are interesting, there are some parts that unanimously increase and decrease in curiosity and confusion, and other parts during which we’re completely unique from each other. A possible further development would be to add a plot of the averages of our data points.
The map becomes interactive when the viewer’s mouse hovers over any given data point. At that moment, a sound clip that Royal created plays, that moment in time (the x-axis of the graphs) is highlighted, and a captioned image (images captured by Vicky, captioned by myself) of the scene at that time is shown above the data. Hearing the sound bits can give the viewer insight into why the collected data is what it is. Alan used JavaScript to put the map together, combining all the components that each of us contributed into one experience map.
Here is our original prototype. We wanted the passing of time to have data representing our emotions (of the ones listed on the side and circled, curiosity and boredom ended up being used). In addition, we wanted to map the movie's sound waves and somehow incorporate the spaces in Jeff's rear window view.
Below is our rough draft. The view from Jeff's window is an integral part of the map as the labels show. We're mapping the data over the duration of the film, and when you scroll over a point in time an image of the scene at that moment with a caption explaining what's happening should appear.
The Process
Below is the background that Spencer put together, incorporating Jeff's neighbors as well as some of the spatial characteristics of the view from Jeff's window. Spencer's blog outlines the work behind this image.
Below is a screen shot of the final product, which links to the full version that Alan put together.
The Effect
Mapping information is a difficult task. Our final product doesn't incorporate several of the ideas we discussed during the prototype stage, though considering how this was all of our first attempt at creating an interactive map like this I am satisfied with the result. It was difficult to coordinate time to meet all together, and delegating tasks was the most efficient way to complete this project.
This map provides the viewer with an overarching sense of the film, and which parts are particularly engaging for whoever's watching. This map not only maps our experiences of the film, but provides an additional way of experiencing the film as well -- in fragmented sound bytes and captioned screen shots that leave you thinking about how engaged you were at that moment in the film.