Let’s think about what type of data

Before I start coming up with some sketches, it is important to figure out what type of data will be in this application as well as how the data will correlate with each other.

My thought process will follow Ben Shneiderman‘s Visual Information Seeking Mantra of:

Overview First, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand“.

In this post, I am going to brainstorm the types of data that I will be using and in future posts, take each section and break it down.

Calendar data – Time-based with various events/appointments generally falling into three type of categories:

  • Time-specific – ex. Doc Appt
  • All day – ex. Birthday
  • Span/range – ex. Vacation

To-do lists or tasks -  Can or cannot be time based and can fall into two type of categories:

  • Deadline
  • Ongoing

Personal data – Data that you want to use for your own reference so that you can see patterns.  Some examples:

  • Sick/Illness – ex. Flu in November and Sinus Infection in December
  • Car maintenance
  • Moods
  • Food diary

Social data – Data from social sites. Some examples are:

  • Blogs
  • Photos
  • Bookmarks

Other data – Data that doesn’t fall in the above categories, but I think it will be interesting to see how it meshes with the other data.  Examples:

  • Weather
  • News events
  • Pop culture
  • Historic events

The next post, I will do some deeper brainstorming into the Calendar data.

Tags: ,

Leave a Reply